What'saCobra,
Thank you very much for your kind words. My thanks goes to our customer who literally gave us a free had to come up with anything we wanted. He just trusted us to come up with something really cool. I must admit, it has kept me awake nights trying to make him happy. The scrap bin is litered with false starts and frustration. Everytime a customer would come by here with a new Supercar they were driving, we would beg them to let us put it on our lift. We then looked and looked at what Porsche, Ferrari, and others had done and then we tried to incorporate it all into this car as best as we could.
You are certainly right, a stiffer chassis allows for softer springs and shocks. I think this baby will really ride sweet. Let's say, I have extremely high hopes.
As for the Penske's...well, this particular set was over $5,000! Like I said, we were given a free hand with absolutely no rules or guidelines. Penske's it had to be. Interestingly, being given a free hand sounds like a dream come true...but it does come with it's own problems. He wanted our BEST work possible...so, that means it had better be our best! It made me pace the floor late at night on many, many occasions.
Given the constraints of the original body geometry, I really don't think we could have come up with a design any stiffer and kept the weight the same (actually, the car should be slightly lighter.) There simply isn't enough room in one of our cars to put any more geometry in there! The lack of a roof seriously impacts the stiffness as well.
Yes, Ford would have spent millions and millions and millions to do this and probably never could have made it. But remember, they didn't have access to Solidworks, Surfcam, and Cosmos along with a room full of 4-5 axis CNC machines in the 60's. Today, we only see so far because we stand on the shoulders of giants. There is no doubt Ford's racing program of the 60's was certainly a giant and we see further because of it.
Your Lola T 212 was a mid-engined car with the engine behind the driver. That completely changes the game and allows the ability to dramatically increase the stiffness of the chassis. The Lola body and chassis have geometry available to them we simply don't have.
As many who are reading may not know, the stiffness of aluminum is only 1/3 the stiffness of steel, so we were starting at an extreme disadvantage with our building material. Originally, we were only shooting for a 50% increase in stiffness as we were making the chassis out of aluminum. Frankly, I am amazed we were able to get the stiffness so high--but that is what staying up late at night does...along with the extradonary talents of my brother's mechanical engineering skills. He has the best mechanical engineering mind of ANYONE I have ever met.
Also, keep in mind, we were not going for the "ultimate" stiffness. We were going for the ulitmate car. The car was conceived from the beginning automotive art, or sculpture. At times I even dreamed I was Michaelango "freeing" the chassis from the aluminum.
I welcome a 100 or even a 1000 engineers to come up with something better! When they do (and someone will!) I will be the first to be there and see what they have done so we can incorporate the advances into our own future products.
Thanks again for the kind words!
David
