A Ferrari Enzo which is no more

[Andre40]

In pristine new condistion

[Andre40]

Must learn to spell - CONDITION.

Ferrari Enzo not in good condition

[Andre40]

Another view

[Andre40]

And another

[Andre40]

Knowing the GTD/CAV/RF space (tube)frame cars and the Superformance monocoque as well as I do I cannot see any of them parting in the middle no matter how hard the smack.

Perhaps good old fashioned technology, ie steel, could have its advantages over carbon fibre!
Sometimes I long for a good old fashioned Ford Cortina with OHV Kent engine and carburettor. If you jump start one it will start! A friend recently leart a bitter lesson about our high tech world when he jump started a BMW. Ouch, said the on-board computer. Cost a lot of money!

This was a seriously, scary high speed shunt.

Drive sensibly!
Andre 40

[DavidTC]

Andre
Great pictures; did the driver survive ?.
The design of the Enzo is somewhat similar to an F1 car. In other words you have a 'survival' monocoque which is ultra strong and rigid, with the rest of the structure designes to be stiff under normal loads BUT to dissapate extreme loads.
The last thing you want is a structure which 'pours' all of the dissapative energy into the 'weakest' link ; the driver. The crash obviously disappated many mega joules of energy; the question is where does all of this go.
One reason why F1 is now so 'safe' is that we understand a lot more about how to dissapate energy in a structure and C fibre based structures are excellent in this respect since they can dissapate lots of energy progressively particularly with honeycomb sandwhich structures. The nose cones for example, 'which have to be type approved', are Nomex/C fibre composite construction.
I would be interested to know if the brake disks survived. If you took the photos would it be possible to get hold of some of the original jpegs?.
Regards
David

[David Morton]

Paolo put it on the site a few months ago. Non survivable.

[DavidTC]

David
Thanks; the point is with a high energy content crash would you want your chassis/monocoque to survive or you to survive !.
David
ps Not sure why all the interest in Enzos; they are chalk and cheese as far as GT40s are concerned.

[David Morton]

That's the beauty of Off Topic Posts. Comparing -40s with anything else is folly.
ps your email is the wrong address on your home page.

[DavidTC]

David
Agreed; that's the point !.

[Andre40]

Thanks for the comments two Davids.

I didn’t know that Paulo had posted the same pics some time ago.

There’s no doubt that there’s been enormous technological advances in race car construction since the 1960s, borne out by the fact that the last driver to be killed in an F1 race was Ayrton Senna in 1994, despite many horrendous accidents since then. Carbon fibre and various sandwich and honeycomb constructions prove the point.

It’s said that one shouldn’t compare apples with onions but one wonders what the outcome would have been had a Roaring Forties tube frame or Jimmy Price monocoque GT40 had identical accidents on the same stretch of road in Italy.

During the seven years I spent in Europe 27 drivers were killed in mainly in F1 and sports car races. Even though Colin Chapman was an early pioneer of monocoques most of the accidents were in tube frame cars clad in flimsy fibreglass body shells with little or no impact resistance.

The year 1968 was a terrible one with the deaths of Jim Clark (April 7), Mike Spence (May 7), Ludovico Scarfiotti (June 8) and Jo Schlesser (July 7), four virtually one per month to the day. It was my last year in Europe and I recall ending the year on a depressed note wondering what motor racing was all about particularly when I looked back and remembered rubbing shoulders and joking with the dead drivers. However one recovers and life goes on.

Former South African national F1 champion was recently reunited with his Lotus 72D with which he won national championships in the early 1970s. Even though it had a monocoque (aluminium) he was aghast that he drove ‘that frail thing at the speeds he did.’ Interesting how sanity prevails as one gets older, but I doubt that applies to Robert Logan or me!

When Walt Hangsen was killed in a GT40 at Le Mans in 1966 during the April practice session, according the former Shelby crew chief, Ron Butler, who was one of the first on the scene, he was killed when the right front wheel snapped back under the impact and hit him in the face. The rest of the monocoque remained largely intact.

A further testimony to the immense strength of carbon fibre was a 300 km/h or so accident involving a prototype Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR. During high speed tests in Italy the car crashed, if I remember correctly when a tyre blew. The SLR went into a never ending series of rolls and somersaults and the only injury to the test driver was a small cut on the nose from the broken windscreen. When I visited Mclaren in mid-2002 and saw the cars in the making Gordon Murray told me of the accident.

One wonders how much thought Mr and Mrs Average Commuter throughout the world give to the contribution to their passengers cars by lessons learnt from the racing and rally circuits of the world. A prime example was the disc brake that first appeared on the works C-Type Jaguars at Le Mans. The Jag tail lights would come on at the end of the Mulsanne straight at the 500 m board as would the drum-braked works Ferraris, As the race wore on the Jag lights flashed on consistently at the 500 m mark whilst the Ferrari lights started to flash at the 800 m board. The rest, as they say, is history. Any drum braked cars in the world? Possibly the-beyond-its-sell-by date the 1950s Morris Oxford I believe still being built in India by Hindustan Motors Ltd as the Ambassador Nova. Or has production stopped now that India is going places.

Take it easy and brake before it’s too late!
André 40








Take it easy,
André 40

[DavidTC]

Andre
Thanks for the response BUT drum brakes are still used extensively even for road cars. A lot of small family saloons still have drums in the rear and they were used even on decent sportscars well into the 80s. I had the first of the 8 or so Lotus Elite Seies II Rivieras that were built (the limited edition with the targa roof), and this had inboard rear drum brakes which helped the handling BUT not the braking. Trucks also use drum brakes. For normal use drums are fine. BUT performance brakes need air ducting etc to keep things cool; difficult with drums. Some low tech solutions still have their niche where outright perormance is not an issue.
Now that Environmental issues are coming to the fore weight saving will become an issue. It could be that we then see heavy trucks with disks brakes that are carbon ceramic making two technological leaps forward in one go !.
Regards
David

[Andre40]

Thanks for that David,

Yes, of course there are still cars with drums at the rear. When one does posts in the early hours, in particular Sunday mornings, the brakes are still on the brain box!

One wonders why since the 1953 Le Mans appearance of the new disc brake, large trucks still taditionally run on drum brakes. Surely disc brakes would pull these monsters up a lot quicker.
The volume of truck traffic on European and UK motor ways is quite scary these days. Now there's and idea for the brake boys! No doubt they've been working on it for a long time.

Talking of trucks a friend and neighbour has developed and patended the PressreRite tyre pressure control system and is now looking for agents world wide. The unit which bolts into the centre of the wheel has a built in pump which maintains the pressure of the wheel as well as the adjoining wheel. A digital read-out on the dash keeps the driver informed. Could be a business opportunity for someone in the trucking/transport business.

Regards,
Andre

[DavidTC]

Agreed; more particularly since trains use disk brakes (with a caliper and pads), whereas military and modern civilian aircraft use disk on disk (one half being rotors the others stators which clamp together under braking.
David

[J What?]

Here is what seems to be the final word for the Enzo driver.
Wonder if the Mercedes was an SLR. sure was pricey.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060410/.../ferrari_crash

[BenL]

[ QUOTE ]
Here is what seems to be the final word for the Enzo driver.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's a different accident. The photos above are of a car that crashed in Italy. The article is about an Enzo that crashed in LA.

[J What?]

So right. Not enough pieces to be the Italian car. All those crashed Enzos look alike.