AMERICA GOES AUTO-UNION

AMERICA GOES AUTO-UNION

American racing car design came in for some very adverse criticism after the Roosevelt race, when Nuvolari’s AlfaRomeo was victorious and the only Americans in the picture drove •twelve.cylinder Alfas. Yet Lee Oldfield, the well known American automobile engineer and designer, produced a remarkably interesting racing-car to the order of Joel Thorne, a young American millionaire, according to an extremely interesting article by Lee Oldfield, in “The Motor” of Septem ber 21st. The car was not proceeded with as Mr. Thorne withdrew his support, but according to the details, which have only been made widely known in this country by the article in question, the car was a rear-engined, independently sprung two-seater with fully automatic transmission and no chassis frame, believed capable of, and designed for, a maximum speed of 175 m.p.h. Although Zborowski had no particular luck with the much-boosted Miller he brought to this country in 1923, and although the Duesenberg imported by Whitney Straight hasn’t done anything very sensational, bar taking the Class C Brooklands Lap Record three years ago at 138.15 m.p.h., this rear-engined Marmon-Oldfield sounds the goodest of the goods and might be a proposition for some British sportsmen who cannot get hold of an Auto-Union or a G.P. Mere. The engine is a 365 cub. in. (6-litre) V16 Marmon, developing 490 b.h.p. at 4,000 r.p.m., with a maximum b.m.e.p. of about 190. The compression ratio is apparently 7.5 to 1, and the vane-type blower delivers at high pressure via an inter-cooled delivery pipe. In fairness to ” The Motor” we refrain from quoting further from the article in question, which should be read by all students of racing-car

design. If the Marmon-Oldfield is all its designer suggests in that article it would cause a vast sensation if imported into this country.