Gagarin, Armstrong, and Pescarolo. It may be a case of grand hyperbole to mention the name of a French racing hero along with the two great space pioneers, but there are some parallels. “Pesca’s” 1972 victory at Le Mans and subsequent hat trick put French motor racing back into the firmament with the other international endurance stars. On the domestic front that was nearly as important as for America and Russia to succeed with spacecraft. As with the space race, the Matra victories came with considerable monetary and human cost, advances in technology, and with more than a little political intrigue.

There was another parallel with rocketry insofar as the name Matra derives from Engins Mecanique Aviation Traction.  The predecessors of Matra extend back almost to the dawn of aviation. Robert Bernard’s company, Société des Avions Bernard built floatplanes and when this firm went bankrupt aeronautics businessman Marcel Chassagny (1903-1988) was called upon to reorganize it into CAPRA (Compagnie Anonyme de Productions et Réalisations Aéronautiques). They built fuselages for the French air ministry and were poised to construct race planes as well when the hostilities broke out. Then in 1941 Chassagny founded Matra, located within the Free French Zone. 

Following the war Matra built airplane fuselages under contract and was instrumental in perfecting many of the early uses for plastics in aeronautic applications. They added missiles and rocket launchers to the portfolio when the company participated in the “MESH” consortium that included Matra, Erno (Germany), Saab (Sweden), and Hawker Siddeley (Britain). The automotive connection came about thanks to Chassagny being personal friends with Rene Bonnet. Charles Deutsch and Bonnet were very successful throughout the 1950s with their very light Panhard powered DBs which typically swept the Index of Performance at Le Mans. It was no coincidence that much of the good performance of the DBs came from their aerodynamic shape to which the engineers at Matra had contributed. The Deutsch-Bonnet partnership became frayed in the early 1960s and Bonnet’s attempt at developing an independent company was artistically a good move but far less successful financially. Chassagny came to the rescue, at first marketing the mostly road going and club racing car, the RB Djet, as the Matra Djet.

Chassagny immediately realized that the future of Matra depended upon success in racing and a subsidiary, Matra Sports, was formed as the company’s automotive offshoot…

by Janos Wimpffen

Photographs: Archiv Matra, DPPI, Bienvenu

All the attention now turned to the debut of the MS9 motor. There was of course a fair degree of French patriotism in finally doing away with les moteurs anglais et américain, but there was a practical matter as well. Georges Martin’s design featured a 60-degree V12 configuration that sat lower in the streamlined engine bay than did the 90-degree V8s. The four-cam 48-valve head sat on an alloy block that initially contained titanium rods before switching to steel for greater reliability. Power was rated at 385 bhp at a screaming 12,000 rpm when it appeared at Le Mans in 1968. Excessive fuel consumption and reliability plagued the V12 for some time and there was considerable experimentation with different exhaust configurations. Another issue was that it increased the weight of the M630 by 100 kg. 

The displacement of the Matra-Simca engine measured 2992cc and could potentially be bored out to 4.2 liters, although it never was. Its usage as a three-liter motor bears further explanation. Through 1967 the World Manufacturers’ Championship was open to cars of unlimited displacement. This contributed to the dominance at Le Mans by the Ford Mk II and Mk IV. There was perhaps a bit of concern that the center of gravity in sports car racing was moving across the Atlantic and moreover the discipline’s centerpiece, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, had not been won by a French car since 1950. Grand Prix racing had switched to a three-liter formula and it would prove to be increasingly popular in the coming years. Although initially there was no French challenger, common three-liter rules in both single-seater and sports car racing would allow one to emerge, especially if there was a chosen national instrument. As Regie Renault was now a nationalized firm, one might expect it to have received government backing to initiate a program but instead it was Matra that was called upon. This came partly from the influence of the powerful Floirat family that had controlled Matra for some time. They were well connected to the halls of power and soon from Charles de Gaulle on down it became clear that French prestige would best be served if a firm with roots in France’s proud aerospace industry would take on the task of again winning Le Mans. As added incentive another nationalized firm, the oil giant Elf, offered Matra sponsorship. 

What Matra, France, and the rule makers had not counted on was a quirk in the regulations. While the three-liter limit for Sports Prototypes was to come into effect in 1968, five-liter engines could be used for a transitional period through 1971. The intent was to grandfather in the various Ford GT40s, Lola T70s and others using older V8s. It also recognized that there would not be enough competitive new three-liter cars ready at the onset. The rules did not prohibit new five-liter cars to be built but no one anticipated that anyone would build a run of new sports-racers. However, that is exactly what Porsche did with the 917 and this led to an entirely different chapter in sports car racing history through the 1971 season.

Ironically, the near term eclipse of the three-liter class allowed Matra to perfect their V12 motor without undue expectations for success. By the end of the five-liter era the French team was ready but it took ample work and pain to get there.

Little was expected of the new motor at its first appearance at Le Mans in 1968. However, the engine of Servoz-Gavin and Pescarolo never skipped a beat as they ran as high as second well into the morning. Frequent stops for fuel required them to always play catch up and then within sight of the end, a series of punctures and an electrical fire led to a late retirement…

by Janos Wimpffen

Photographs: LAT, DPPI, McKlein, Siebert

The story of the Alfa Romeo GTA began in the early 1960s. At the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1963, Alfa unveiled a new two-plus-two coupé based on the Giulia sedan called the Giulia Sprint GT. Designed by Bertone, the new car had a slightly shorter wheelbase compared to the sedan (2350 mm), and was initially only fitted out with the 1.6-litre, 106-horsepower engine.

In 1965, Alfa released a new special version of the ‘Bertone’ to be the base model for motor racing – the Giulia Sprint GTA. The letter ‘A’ at the end stood for ‘Alleggerita’ (lightened in Italian), and while from the outside the GT and the GTA were virtually indistinguishable, the GTA was essentially a completely different car. Instead of a steel body, the GTA was constructed from Peraluman 25 aluminium alloy. That, along with getting rid of luxury items like the insulation, sun visors, ash tray, cigarette lighter, and the chrome grill, and adding lighter seats and magnesium wheels, dropped the homologation weight down to just 760 kilograms – nearly 200 kilograms lighter than the Sprint GT. And for racing purposes there was an even lighter version, the ‘Corsa’, which weighed in at just 700 kilograms.

In addition, the GTA had a newly-constructed cylinder head with re-worked intake and exhaust ports and double ignition. The valve covers and oil sump were made from magnesium, and the engine was fed through two twin Weber 45 DCEO 14 carburettors. Given all that, the 115 horsepower output was quite modest – although the Corsa’s performance was 170 horsepower. The car also featured a sporty five-speed gearbox and rolled around on 14-inch magnesium wheels measuring five and seven inches in width.

From Day 1 the works GTA racing cars were run by Alfa’s own racing devision, Autodelta, under the direction of Carlo Chiti. The ‘Ingegnere’ from Pistoia and Ludovico Chizzola had formed the Delta Automobili company in early 1963, before changing its name to Autodelta and setting up shop in Udine. There, they were employed by Alfa to prepare and race a small run of Alfa TZs…

by Harold Schwarz

Photographs: Kräling, Dasse, LAT

30 years ago it was the car supposed to bring Brabham-BMW back in the hunt for the World Championship. It was radical and spectacular. For a moment, it even made Niki Lauda reconsidering his retirement. Gordon Murray’s final work for Brabham certainly had the looks. But it failed to deliver. Read AUTOMOBILSPORT’s protocol about the ‚roller-skate‘ Brabham BT55 and its traumatic Grand Prix season of 1986.

At the end of 1985, Brabham was in turmoil. Since Nelson Piquet had impressively charged to the 1983 World Championship, Bernie Ecclestone’s cars only managed to win three more races. 1985, in particular, was a season to forget. Never short of steam in a straight line, the Brabham-BMW combination had gradually lost its edge in terms of overall performance. Not helped by a switch from Michelin to Pirelli rubber, the team had now fallen back behind McLaren, Ferrari, Lotus and Williams. Even worse, Brabham’s main asset, its Brazilian World Champion driver, had left to join Frank Williams for 1986.

For turning things around, Brabham would need something extraordinary. The task on hand for technical director and chief designer Gordon Murray wasn’t an evolution – he was looking for a revolution. Long before 1985, Murray was well aware of the facts that would limit Brabham’s future potential: „F1 had introduced a new set of technical regulations for 1983, banning the ground effect cars. The dart-shape BT52 fitted that brilliantly to start with, and Nelson won the drivers title. But for any further aero development it was clear that the tall straight-four BMW engine would put us on a disadvantage to the lower and also structurally stiffer V6 powerplants of TAG-Porsche, Renault, Honda and Ferrari.“

The BMW unit wasn’t self-carrying; its installation in the chassis required an aluminium front plate and a steel frame, which gave increased weight and a further handicap regarding packaging on the rear end. Gordon Murray said of the 1985 Brabham: „With the BT54 we had reached the limit of what was aerodynamically possible with the engine concept we had.“

Thinking out of the box

Never one to be afraid of radical approaches, Gordon summarised that there were two major factors that limited his vision on drastic aerodynamic gains: the tall engine and also the upright driver seat position. Regarding the engine, Murray presented the idea of canting-over the BMW motor to his befriended German counterpart, Paul Rosche, early in 1985. Given the dimensions of the straight-four unit this would be the only way to lower the rear end of the car. Rosche liked the idea, but he also draw attention to the high costs of the modifications that the powerplant would need…

by Andreas Riehl

Photographs: BMW, Sutton

“Even they [Abarth] are not clear about the origins of the abbreviation SE. It used to alternate with ES in their list of projects.” Sergio Limone

In the children’s story of Snow White, her evil step-mother has a magic mirror to which she daily poses the question “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all ?”. If such a magic mirror had been available in the mid-1980s, one could have put Group B rally cars in front of it and asked “Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the most powerful of them all ?”. The generally accepted figure was 450 bhp but there was a healthy suspicion that, with exotic fuels, this was far too modest. In his recent book “Diary” Walter Röhrl says that the Audi Sport Quattro E2 that he drove had 530 bhp. On the other hand, Markku Alén was quoted as saying that the Lancia Delta S4 could peak at 550 bhp. Without a magic mirror, one may never know, but certainly the Delta S4, despite its supercharged and turbocharged engine having one cylinder less and a cylinder capacity of 1,760 cc when compared with the macho Quattro E2 with its five cylinders and 2,110 cc, may have had the distinction of being the most powerful rally car ever to have contested the FIA’s World Rally Championship.

One reason that Lancia were nearly always one step ahead of their opposition was that, ever since the consolidation of Lancia and Fiat competition activities at Abarth during 1978, they were always looking to the next step. Their first Group B car was the SE037, the Lancia Rallye, which appeared on the rally scene in April 1982 and was effectively a modern Stratos. The four-wheel drive revolution led by Audi mean that by the end of 1983, the 037 needed a performance uplift by means of an homologation evolution and became the 037 E2. But even then, there was a third evolution under consideration in the Abarth workshops. In mid-1984 after the Peugeot 205 T16 had broken cover and raised the bar again, the 037 E2 prototype was turned into a test vehicle to incorporate 4WD and an engine with both a turbocharger and a Volumex supercharger into a tubular steel frame. At this stage, the final bodywork panels that would transform it into the familiar Delta shape were not available. It was so ugly that the mechanics named it “Mazinga” after a Japanese cartoon character then popular in Italy – un robot prodigisio.

With Lancia desperate to have a rally car capable of taking the fight to Peugeot’s new prodigy, which had just won four WRC rallies in sequence and was due to win another four during 1985, work went on unceasingly in the first half of the year with Lancia hoping to have the SE038, or Delta S4 as it was to be better known, ready for the 1000 Lakes Rally in August…

by John Davenport

Photographs: McKlein, Kräling