Seven of the most ingenious racing cars ever

Well, in order to make such a bold list, we’ve needed some rules. There are plenty of absolutely off-the-wall creations that have raced, but we think there does need to be some form of proper thought behind them. So some of the wilder ideas are out, and we’re talking racing cars here, so Tommy Ivo’s bonkers four-engined “Showboat” is out, as is the Quattro. We also want to find some balance between successes that changed motorsport forever and great ideas that failed, so some of these cars feel less wild than they did back in their day.

With those rules in mind, these are the seven cars that live rent free in our heads due to their sheer ingenuity.

Nissan GT-R LM Nismo

Was the GTR-LM needlessly different? Was it always on a hiding to nothing? Or was it a potentially ingenious interpretation of the rules that just hit a few hurdles? Your answer to this question could go either way.

When Nissan entered the World Endurance Championship, just as the hybrid LMP1 rules were coming to their peak, the Japanese company – lead by future Aston Martin boss Andy Palmer – wanted to stand out from the crowd. Enlisting designer Ben Bowlby, who also designed the DeltaWing, Nissan would settle on what would appear to be a front-engined, front-wheel-drive design. It was, unfortunately, an abject failure, racing only once – at Le Mans – before disappearing into the ether.

But to just assess it on that one race is unfair. The car was not actually front-engined, more front-mid, with the driver behind the power unit, which in turn was behind the front axle. It was also not meant to be purely front-wheel-drive. Like most P1 cars it was to send power to all four tyres, but a delay in the creation of the hybrid power unit left the GTR-LM with nothing to move its rear axle. As a result it was slow, with torque steer out of the corners and not enough retardation on braking, but was the fastest of all down the straights, showcasing some of its potential. Sadly Nissan decided not to allow the team to fix the issues, ending the programme that same year – allegedly via email.

Lotus 80

I could have chosen a whole host of Lotuses for this spot, especially in the ground effect era. The 78 that started the revolution, the 88 that tried a double-chassis to make it work better, the 79 that apparently perfected it, there’s plenty. But it is the Lotus 80, another abject failure when it comes to results, that will find a place on this list.

The 80 was designed not just to harness ground effect, but to be ground effect. The car was basically one big downforce machine, with the whole body supposed to create that magic underbody downforce. The ground effect-creating tunnels would start right behind the nose, to generate masses of downforce, and the nose itself was meant to act as a second, smaller, ground effect system. The car therefore needed to be a lot stiffer to deal with all this potential downforce, and the sidepods tapered into a “coke bottle” shape, something that would not become the norm for several years. Sadly this ingenious design was fatally flawed, as the car moved its centre of pressure moved with it, causing it to porpoise through the corners, lurching up and down as the driver tried to reign it in. Mario Andretti said it was fine at high speeds and persevered, Carlos Reutemann said no, and switched back to the Lotus 79.

Penske PC23

Imagine designing a car so good it won 12 out of 16 races in one season, including seven in a row. Now imagine finding a loophole in the regulations that would make that same car even more unstoppable for a single race? That was what Penske did with the PC23.

The loophole in question revolved around pushrod engines, and only applied to the Indy 500. Back in 1994 the rules for the 500 were actually set by a different governing body than the overall CART championship. These USAC rules allowed for powerful pushrod engines to be used, based on standard road-car engines. But what no-one except Penske and engine partner Ilmor spotted, was that the requirement for the car to have road car parts was quietly removed in 1991. Penske and Ilmor quietly created an engine with around 1,000PS (735kW), (and Mercedes later paid to brand it), an advantage of around 150-200PS (110-147kW) on an oval course that demanded power, power and more power. Unsurprisingly the PC23 dominated the race, with former F1 champ Emerson Fittipaldi a full lap ahead of every non-Penske car before he hit the wall with 16 laps to go. Team-mate Al Unser Jr would take the win, lapping all but Jacques Villeneuve.

Adams Escort “Pontoon car”

We’ve already mentioned ground effect in this piece, and cars that attempted to harness it in ways that ultimately proved fruitless. Well the Adams Escort is another in that category. So odd was the Escort that it was nicknamed the “Pontoon car” because of the way it looked like a big floating pontoon.

But the shape had good reason. In splitting the driver to one side and the massive 5.0-litre Chevrolet V8 to the other designer Herb Adams was able to put one, massive ground effect inducing venturi tunnel right down the middle of the car.

There were, of course, compromises. Like the fact that the engine had to be mounted at a slight angle meaning it was partly outside of the bodywork of the car, but Adams’ designed worked, and created huge amounts of downforce... too much downforce. Just like the Lotus 80, the centre of pressure would fluctuate in cornering, making the car porpoise wildly. The Escort also basically shredded itself at the first race, beginning to twist the chassis and sending body parts flying and was a nightmare to drive – to the point the experienced racer Milt Minter just refused to steer it any more. Hated by drivers and black flagged due to its disintegrating nature, the Escort wasn’t long for the world. But it looked very cool.

Cooper T43

Sometimes ingenious designs don’t look that clever looking back. That’s not because they aren’t incredible or didn’t do well, but just due to the fact that what they introduced is now the norm.

The Cooper T43 is one of those cars. And such was the short nature of its life that even its Wikipedia page is vastly outstripped by that of Cooper’s follow-up, the T51. But it was the T43 that revolutionised F1 in both a metaphorical and literal sense. The T43 was the first mid-engined car to ever win a Grand Prix (you’ll often see it referred to as rear-engined, but this is because the engine had normally been in front of the driver – like the GTR-LM it was definitely mid-mounted) and sparked a revolution that has never looked back.

The T43 would win its first ever race, in the hands of Stirling Moss in Argentina, a victory more down to tactics – Moss didn’t pit and limped him on shredded tyres while his competitors lost time in the pits – than the T43’s innovation. But the template was set. The T45 would expand on the theory before the T51, just a year later, would clinch the world championship. The T51 gets the headlines, but it was the T43 that set that change in motion.

Tyrrell P34

Two wheels good, four wheels good, six wheels... better? That was the rough theory that designer Derek Gardner was following when he came up with the idea for the Tyrrell P34. If you look at the P34’s four front wheels you might think that they’re there to create more grip, but you’d be wrong. In fact the change from two axles at the front to four was for better airflow.

In the 1970s there was a maximum allowed width for the rather rudimentary front wings the cars carried at the time. At 1.5m it was quite restrictive and, given drivers refuse to lop their feet off for better aerodynamics, meant that wheels often protruded beyond the edge of that wing. If the wheels could be shrunk, the aero effect would be much better, not only reducing drag but also improving flow to the rear wing. But smaller wheels would mean smaller contact patches and less mechanical grip, so Gardner decided on using four, which also meant more braking area.

It was a genius design and won on only its third outing. But, like many ingenious car designs, it had some major flaws – largely that on bumpy circuits it would often find that one of the smaller wheels would leave the ground, meaning it momentarily actually had less grip than the four-wheeled cars at the front. Eventually the problems mounted up and Tyrrell would abandon the concept. But, for two glorious seasons, not all cars in F1 had four wheels.

Chaparral 2J

Like Lotus, just about every Chaparral could be in this list. From the 2E with its massive, movable rear wing, to the 2F which did the same with a closed-cockpit, or the teardrop-shaped 2H (a much lesser known, but absolutely gorgeous design). But it’s the 2J we’ve chosen, a car that took ground effect designs to their logical maximum long before Gordon Murray could build his fan car for Brabham.

The 2J had plastic skirts to seal the underside of the car (long before F1 teams did the same), and two fans – derived from a tank engine – to literally suck the air through and out of the underside of the car. Chaparral even created an intricate suspension system that kept the bottom of the skirt no higher than an inch off the ground no matter the surface.  In the simplest possible terms it tried to create a vacuum to stick the car to the tarmac.

When it ran in 1970 it qualified a full two seconds clear of the field, but fell back with various early mechanical teething problems. Sadly the SCCA, which ran Can-Am, bowed to pressure from rivals and banned the system. Ironically one of the most vociferous opponents was McLaren, whose argument that the potential dominance of the 2J would ruin the series was slightly hollow, considering it had dominated Can-Am for years.

There are hundreds of cars that could also make this list, in fact we’ll probably write a few follow-ups over the coming months. Let us know in the comments what incredibly ingenious designs you love the most.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.