Any Help?

Can I receive information about "Lambert Grand Prix 1937"?
Thank you, and very compliment for the site is the best!!!

Moreno Novelli


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Regards,

Dennis David
Yahoo = dennis_a_david

Life is racing, the rest is waiting

Grand Prix History
www.ddavid.com/formula1/

Well, I am certainly unaware of an event called the "Lambert GP" that was run to either the GP or Voiturette formulae in 1937. Any other info that might lead us to sort this one out?

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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,

Don Capps

Semper Gumbi: If this was easy, we’d have the solution already…

Where was it, there may be a clue somewhere . . .
In the meantime, did you know that Kurt Ahrens came second to Henri Grandsire's Stanguellini in the Formula Junior race at Klangenfart in 1960?

Stanguellini - Now that's a good story. ;-)


------------------
Regards,

Dennis David
Yahoo = dennis_a_david

Life is racing, the rest is waiting

Grand Prix History
www.ddavid.com/formula1/

Ray,

Somehow, I managed to miss that one! When was it in 1960? And was it Ahrens Jr. in his Stanguellini or Ahrens Sr. in his Cooper-Fiat?

However, I am sure you recall Heinz Melkus in his Melkus-Wartburg beating out Friedrich Radlein, in another Melkus-Wartburg, and Siegmar Bunk in yet another Melkus-Wartburg at the Sachsenring in 1960.

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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,

Don Capps

Semper Gumbi: If this was easy, we’d have the solution already…



[This message has been edited by Don Capps (edited 12-18-1999).]

Don,
I'm afraid nothing of this is from my memory, and my book records nothing of Sachsenring other than Riley's Cooper-BMC beating the SEG-Wartburg of Lehrmann and Mattila's Lotus Ford in 1962.
Klangenfart was, of course, in Austria. So it was Ahrens Jr before he could stray so farm from home, and he drove the prettiest FJr of all, the Lola. He actually won at Linz that year, beating Bardi-Barry's Poggi-Fiat and daddy in the Cooper-Fiat.
So we've got different books?
I wonder if following a Wartburg smelled anything like following a worn out Datsun 510?

Ray,

Try the Sachsenring on 31 July 1960. Both the Ahrens started on the front row of the grid, but Jr. went out after 7 of the 12 laps and Sr. after 10 laps.

And there is Willy Krenkel in 4th driving a Wartburg Eigenbau which, of course, has me fascinated as to what that puppy looked like.

If you have the Cowdrey FJ book, check page 59 for a picture of the Melkus.

I am working off my notes (info that turned up while delving into German F2 racing from 1949-1954) and the Sheldon FJ books.

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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,

Don Capps

Semper Gumbi: If this was easy, we’d have the solution already…



[This message has been edited by Don Capps (edited 12-18-1999).]

Sorry, don't have that book.
But you might know which FJr car was fitted with a 1340cc engine (ie. Classic crank in 105E block) and slightly larger wheels (and a little ballast) to run F1?
The driver became (IMHO) one of the greats.

Lambert "Grand Prix" 1937.
Of course we were not able to find such a race, if only for a quite basic reason : it is not a race...it is a car !
A Cyclecar, actually, built by the French company of the same name (Lambert)and logically released, under such misleading name, in 1937.
The Company was originally started in 1926 by Germain Lambert in the French town of Maçon, and its first car was a small sports car with a 4 cyl Ruby engine. They kept on building these cars (a few units) until 1931, when the factory relocated near Reims. After that date, Lambert started building really tiny Cyclecars. After the war the company decided to go back to sports car production (relocated once again, this time to Giromagny) and in 1948 a small 1.100cc two-seater front-engined sports-car appeared. Driving this car Germain Lambert won its class in the 1951 Bol d´Or. A further car was produced, a single coupé, and after that, in 1954, the Company closed its doors.
As it usually happens, these details are not the result of a painful investigation, but just the coincidence of this junior member buying the December 1999 Ruotechassiche magazine (see page 117 for a picture of the car) whilst extremelly bored as the family conveniently ignoring me while Xmas shopping !
BTW, I would like to wish you all Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year. :-)
Un abrazo
Felix

Felix – You are a Scholar and a Gentleman!

------------------
Regards,

Dennis David
Yahoo = dennis_a_david

Life is racing, the rest is waiting

Grand Prix History
www.ddavid.com/formula1/

More like following a Trabandt I would have thought

Always wanted an excuse to find out what a Wartburg Eigenbau looked like #102 I think, of course not to be confused with a Wartburg Umbau or a Melkus Wartburg :-)

It is "Trabant" (as it is "Klagenfurt" and not "Klangenfart") and it has a two stroke engine, but not the same as the Wartburg.

Melkus started building a series of single seater models with the Wartburg engine in the fifties before he designed the RS 1000 Sports car at the end of the Sixties.
http://www.melkus-motorsport.de/index.php/...ge-details.html

Thanks Uechtel made a mental note not to post on TNF after midnight :-)

I did wonder if the Melkus RS 1600 could possibly be a two stroke obviously not. my bad

I'm not sure whether you're taking the Michael here. "Eigenbau" in German translates literally as "Self-made", so "Wartburg Eigenbau" simply means "Wartburg Special" in English.

As I understood it there were many different Wartburg Eigenbau's but I have never seen any of them until now this thread encouraged me to see what I could find. I hope that clarifies D-Type.

Hm, in German an "Eigenbau" means built by the driver himself. To my understanding, a "Special" can also be built by somebody else?

Thanks for the correction - I don't speak German. What happens if a driver builds himself an eigenbau and then sells it?

My understanding is that 'eigenbau' means either do it yourself construction, self construction or self made.

'Special' does not necessarily imply the self build quality, especially in the US context where teams used to build Specials for Indianapolis for example, and even in the UK a special can mean something that came out of a factory like the Fiat 124 similar to the one I learned to drive in.

Then you sell your self constructed car and some one else buys your self constructed car it's up to the purchaser to fess up to not being the original constructor :-)

Correct. If I sell my car then the new owner may call it Wartburg Spezial, Uechtel Spezial, Wartburg-Umbau, Uechtel-Wartburg or maybe even New-Owner-Spezial, I have seen all kinds of this (besides the "Umbau") in race programmes already. But - if he is honest - it can not be an "Eigenbau" for him.

And to be even more pedantic, strictly speaking "Eigenbau" means indeed actually built by somebody himself. You can buy a kit and put it together by yourself. Self-designed would be called an "Eigenkonstruktion" (which of course can also be an Eigenbau at the same time...)

Way to go Uechtel

"The limits of my world are the limits of my language" as Mr Wittgenstein once said :-)

Or to be pedantric 'Die Grenzen meine Sprache sind Die Grenzen meiner Welt'

I'm learning something here

I knew Eigenbau meant "self-built", but never stopped to think that if, for example, Herr Müller sold me his BMW-Eigenbau, it would no longer be a BMW-Eigenbau

Cultural differences - in English we have always been able to talk about Mr Smith and his self-built Austin 7 Special, but when he sold it the car would still be an Austin 7 Special. If he'd been particularly successful with it, it might have been known as "the Smith Austin 7 Special", but only informally. The new owner, on the other hand, might have sought extra kudos by calling it Smith Special (or of course anything else he chose)

Yes but if Herr Koehler built a Wartburg Eigenbau and sold it to Mr Smith, Mr Smith might correctly call his purchase a Koehler Wartburg Eigenbau in English or German :-) Once an Eigenbau always an Eigenbau just a question of weather someone credits the original Eigenbauer :-)

This discussion makes me wonder how complicated the tracing of the history of Indianapolis/Champ cars might be, when in years gone by they were generally referred to by their sponsor's name, such as the "Noc-Out Hose-Clamp Special" or the "Blue Crown Special" etc. This practice applied from pre World War 2 to the 1970's and one wonders if one year's "Chiropractic Special" might easily have become the next year's "Central Excavating Special", with a change of owner and/or sponsor.

When Offenhauser motors were almost universal, did racing insiders refer to cars by their constructor's names, Kurtis, A J Watson, Epperly, Kuzma etc, or by owner's names, or ??? .

I suspect tracing Indy Champcars would be an absolute nightmare given all the name changes with the coming and going of sponsors.

Piece of cake...

That sounds like the voice of experience, I'll know where to come knocking when the going gets tough :-)

Generally, most cars were named after the owner, sometimes owner+engine as in "Smith Offy" or "Jones Cragar". On some occasions, a sponsor's name would be used if it was on the same car or with the same team/owner over a longer period of time, or simply a very prominent design and/or name. This applies mostly for the high time of the US racing special, i.e. thirties to fifties, but also later. Some time during the fifties, some builders acquired "status" by producing a number of winners, notably Frank Kurtis and A. J. Watson, and people began to refer to Kurtis or Watson chassis, but one may argue that both these men were no longer special builders anyhow. Champ and Sprint Cars to this day are mostly refered to by the owner's name, I gather, and they remain largely specials to this day, too - some buffs may notice how this or that car has a J & J or a Beast chassis, but the cars are usually built up individually from diverse components, such as chassis, drive train, suspensions and body panels (such as there are!). Not that different from the thirties when, say, Curly Wetteroth would beat the bodywork out, Myron Stevens produce the frame rails and the owner and/or his mechanics furnish the rest mostly from junkyard scrap. Positively no one in period called the cars "Wetteroth/Offy", "Stevens/Miller" or the like.

Oh, and btw, no "Chiropractic Special" ever became a "Central Excavating Special"!

Thanks for the insight Michael :-)

I'm sure they didn't

But I for one privately adopted that usage for reasons of consistency with the rest of the world. Ideally of course you'd need a third column (or bracketed appendage) for the name it was known as (Boyle Valve Special, Dean Van Lines Special), and another for the owner. Much more than in European practice, all those meant something

But where do the likes of 'Poison Lil' fit in? Not to mention engine-builders...

The trouble with that "consistency" is that it is not consistent!

The original info for those widely accepted monikers comes probably from the entry blank information provided by the entrant, and as such is entirely down to the imagination of that person! Some of them named the manufacturer of the frame rails ("Whippet" - of course, Whippet never built an Indy Car!!), some the maker of the bodywork, and some just named the make of engine! It certainly was a laudable effort to cull all this information from the entry forms to provide some means of identification, but it should never have stopped there!!! Now, we have the situation that "the world" has taken this information at face value for so many years, it has become extremely difficult to argue your case even if you have the better arguments.

Just one example: the following six pictures show the very same car in six consecutive Indy 500 qualifying shots. You can trust my word on this, it IS the same car without a shadow of a doubt, perfectly traceable from owner to owner, and also fully identified by Mark Dees in his wonderful "Miller Dynasty". To each picture I will add the "official" chassis and engine identification as known by "the rest of the world" (you can look them up in the source of your choice):

All pictures © Artemis Images



1931: Bill Cummings, #3 Cooper/Miller




1932: Paul Bost, #17 Cooper/Miller




1933: Dave Evans, #38 Rigling/Studebaker (note that the engine has indeed changed, from a Miller straight 8 to a Studebaker 8)




1934: Tony Gulotta, #8 Cooper/Studebaker




1935: Frank Brisko, #41 Rigling/Studebaker




1936: Zeke Meyer, #53 Cooper/Studebaker


Now, you tell me the consistency in calling the car a Cooper, then a Rigling, then a Cooper, a Rigling again, and finally a Cooper again!?!?!??

I wonder if 'Art Rose' made or lost money on his transactions ? What happened to the car next ?

There is an answer - we (or at least I) just don't know it

Find the reason for the first change to Rigling - it'll either be someone correcting the earlier error (unlikely) or Mr Rigling claiming undue credit. I certainly thought Rigling frames were specially built for the Studes...

And who built the Cooper chassis anyway?

It disappeared into the great void of the Joel Thorne racing team, failed to qualify for the 1937 event and was never heard of again. Presumably scrapped.

Art Rose was "merely" a sponsor for this car, it was apparently owned by Floyd Smith through 1935, then Mike Boyle in 1936 who sold it to Thorne. The latter was buying racing cars at the rate of one every other minute or so, hence the comment about the "void"...

Thanks Michael I guess if you want your name on the car you have to pay :-)

Nope. Neither. No one's correcting no one here - as I said, it's most likely the info culled from the entry blank, filled out by the respective entrant: Mr. Carroll Hall in 1931, Mr. Paul Bost in 1932, Mr. Arthur E. Rose in 1933, Mr. Floyd Smith in 1934, Mr. Kenneth Schroeder in 1935, and Messrs. Michael J. Boyle and Harold L. Henning in 1936. No amount of guessing will tell you what crossed their respective minds when they did what they did.

This car entity actually started life as a single-seater "Cooper Special" in 1927, built by the Cooper Engineering Co. in Indianapolis. It was a slightly modified "Marmon Special" in 1928, and then a "Cooper Special" again in '29 (without further modifications). Floyd Smith took the frame and several other components to build the 1931 two-man car "Empire State Special", and Herman Rigling presumably hammered the body panels. So, there's a lot of Cooper, Smith and Rigling in the car at the same time. How to call it may depend on anybody's preferences, but one should be consistent. I prefer to call it a Smith, because Cooper only built single-seaters, and this is a two-man car, and because Rigling was just a race shop performing a customer's order.

Btw, that's how the car looked like as a single-seater, the way god and Earl Cooper meant it to be:



1927 © Grand Prix Library




1928 © IMS




1929 © GPL

Aha!
Even you change names for consistency's sake

Is it my imagination or is there a gear shift on both sides of the cockpit of the Cooper from 1927 - 1929 ?

I was never a fan of the Paul-Sheldon-school-of-thought, "once a Cooper, always a Cooper" - the single-seater and the two-seater are clearly two different cars, even if they "share" the same entity. I have no qualms about changing a car's name for identification purposes, if the specification and/or appearance changes (more or less) dramatically. After all, the real purpose of taxonomy is to know what we're talking about, isn't it? Is it really proper to call the Multi-Union an Alfa Romeo P3? I don't think so.




Gear shift on the right, and hand brake to the left.

For a two-speed gearbox, one shifter is quite enough!

Thanks for clearing that up :-)

Me neither. He needed separate columns for the car's name and its chassis. Very confusing for people using Black Books as their only source


First point is that our discussion was about US cars, which require different analysis. Secondly, the example you quote would be covered by my third-column proposal

I'm not so sure about that. I am also not quite sure if I understand your third-column proposal - first, you reject Sheldon because he needs two columns, then you proffer a third!? Do you mean the "Duesenberg/Duesenberg/Duesenberg" stuff we see all too often in connection with Indy Car results? I abhor that immensely!!! It's a "Duesenberg", for crissake! If it's a Duesenberg chassis with a Duesenberg engine that is entered by Duesenberg, then why not keep it simple unless one of these "components" is changed??? It looks better if you have a "Foreman Axle/Duesenberg/Miller", but it's still too involved for my liking. It takes a bit of effort, but if you can determine that the chassis (and bodywork, suspension etc.) is still standard Duesey, then "Duesenberg/Miller" is fine with me, and it's conforming with European/International standards.

I still prefer to call the true specials by "name of the owner/name of engine", which is still coherent even if you later find out that the car was actually built by someone else. In the example above, I would start out by calling the two-seater car "Boyle/Studebaker" in 1936 and "Thorne/Studebaker" in 1937, until I can establish that the car is still basically unchanged from when it was the "Smith/Studebaker". If you really want to establish the individual provenance of any car, there's no alternative to the investigation anyhow, and if you don't, there's no harm done by calling it a "Boyle/Studebaker" when owned by Mike Boyle - it's simple, and coherent!

Getting back to your earlier query about "Poison Lil" and engine-builders: the former is just a nickname, and may be used as a substitute for a chassis number, but careful! Some nicknames transfer from one car to another!! And as for engines, I must admit that I have changed my view on this over the years, especially as a result of my American studies. There are so many Ford conversions to start with, that it is extremely unlikely that we will EVER get beyond scratching the surface! And how many different Fronty conversions alone existed? I don't think anyone will ever know with any degree of certainty. But when is a Ford still a Ford? Most conversions start out with a new head, perhaps overhead valves, then the bottom end gets modified, too: a new block, crankcase... If you see a Dreyer engine in the results, even if the bore and stroke data from the entry blank is known and correct, who can say if it still has the Ford block and a three-main bearing crankshaft, or a full Dreyer block and five mains??? Or anything in between... The same goes for Hal engines, McDowell, Cragar, even Frontenac.

A couple of years ago, I strolled through a few threads in the Technical Forum, and I caught a sentence which I immediately connected to: someone stated that "for me an engine head is the engine!" And I believe that's right! If you put a DO Fronty head on a Model T engine block, it's no longer a Ford, is it? Sure, it still uses quite a number of Ford components, but so does the special builder when he uses a Whippet frame, Ford axles, Dodge steering and the bodywork cut and transformed from a Chevy. Is it then a "Whippet-Ford-Dodge-Chevrolet Special"? Yes, it is, but that's a clumsy way to refer to one single car! Why not call it "Smith Special" if it was Mr. Smith who put it all together, and that's the way we usually go about it. For the technically interested buff it will be interesting to know what components he used for it, but for the casual race goer it's enough to know that it is a special, and has a name to differentiate it from the "Jones Special", the "Miller Special" etc. The same with the engines: some people will be interested to know that the Repco-Brabham F1 engine was built using an Oldsmobile block, but that hardly makes it an Oldsmobile, and "Repco-Brabham" is long and complicated enough without an Olds suffix! It takes a bit of time to get used to, but there's simply no alternative when collecting US race results of the thirties, for example. If you're lucky, you'll find out that Bob Smith raced the Dreyer owned by Carl Jones, and that's likely all you'll ever know. I take down "Bob Smith, Jones/Dreyer" and if I ever happen to find out more about it, I can still amend. I don't want and don't need a "third column"!

I am not to sure where this third column fits into the topic but I do find it most interesting how historians keep track of all this stuff, I imagine they have enormous ledgers full of all these details, either way I am grateful that there are people 'who know things' and obviously spend a considerable amount of time thinking about how to record the details :-)

When I typed Lambert Grand Prix 1937 I got this can any one confirm this is the topic of the thread ?

Yes (or should that be No). I was just suggesting a hypothetical case using 2 of the more unusual names for dramatic effect.

In Floyd Clymer's 1960 Indianapolis Year Book there is a technical description of each car in the entry, and it is interesting to note that several cars were built by other people to A J Watson plans, and that one of these was qualified on pole position by Eddie Sachs.

I wonder if chassis design and handling were not seen as important factors until the arrival of serious, lighter, rear-engined European cars from 1963 onward.

Perfectly understood. I just happened to have the relevant data base open, and was able to check in a jiffy.



I don't think it was seen as unimportant, I rather guess it was a not in the "culture" (for want of a better word) to use car names refering to chassis manufacturers. Kurtis, Watson et al started out as special builders, and just happened to find "the formula" to build cars to the same pattern, and thus become "true constructors". That's the same way that got Chapman (and others) started, but in Europe it was always an important issue to name the cars, even the specials, after manufacturers. It's not a well defined field to differentiate between manufacturer, constructor and (special) builder, it's something that has grown from usage, but Chapman named his specials "Lotus" from the very beginning, probably also with a view of making road cars. Less so with Cooper, Connaught etc., but it was the "done thing" to give the child a name. Not so in the US, pretty much until the arrival of the Europeans, beginning perhaps with Maserati and Ferrari.

Thanks for your detailed rationale, Michael. Can't disagree with any of it. And I did suggest that engines were a can of worms - as you confirmed

I would never call a car a Duesenberg-Duesenberg-Duesenberg. I'm simply saying that if the Black Books had used a third column for car names, then the same name - in this instance - would happen to appear three times. It would also have avoided calling Chris Staniland's 1938/39 car an Alfa Romeo, when it wasn't

I'm talking dreaded statistical listings here, not narrative

I've seen that photo before, but can't recall where
It's fairly obviously the Test Hill at Brooklands, I think, and some English one-off
The name Lambert does not connect with it in my mind, but I doubt it ever saw a Grand Prix

Sounds like the word is 'I must try harder', from the man who knows many things :-)

Thanks David I'll let you know how I get on :-)

So I tried a little harder amongst friends in France at motorlegend.com and am thrilled to present a contender for the 1935 Lambert Grand Prix :-)

All 500 cm3 of it.

Not sure if this is the exact GP model but I think we are getting close :-)

Special thanks to 'Duser' at motorlegend.com