Smokey trail

Sir,

Douglas Kent (Letters, November) suggests Piero Taruffi’s Tarf twin-boom record car was based on similar theories to Smokey Yunick’s 1964 Indy ‘capsule’ car. The twin-boom Nardi Bisiluro which ran at Le Mans in ’55 was of course a similar but less successful creation. However, Yunick’s oddball is quite different from either – it isn’t twin-boom and seems to be unique.

Of course, I don’t know what aeroplane he saw in 1944, but I reckon the Blohm und Voss BV141 must be the most likely candidate, with a similar arrangement of an offset cockpit and an asymmetric fuselage. There is film of this strange device on YouTube should anyone be interested – it’s as weird an aeroplane as the Yunick racer is a weird car. Why anyone should have been inspired to copy it is beyond me!

Bruce Barton, Shepton Beauchamp, Somerset