The Sports Car Its design and performance
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THE
SPORTS CAR Its design and performance
COLIN CAMPBELL M.Sc., C.Eng., M.I.Mech.E.
CHAPMAN AND HALL LONDON
First published 1954 Reprinted (three times) 1955, 1956 Second edition 1959 Reprinted 1960, 1961, 1962, 1965 Third edition (revised) 1969 Fourth edition 1978 © Colin Campbell 1959, 1969, 1978 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 4th edition 1978 Photoset in English Times by Red Lion Setters, Hotborn, London
ISBN-13:978-1-4613-3386-9 e-ISBN-13:978-1-4613-3384-5 001: 10.1007/978-1-4613-3384-5 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted, or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publishers.
To my wife for her toleration of much fast motoring and more slow writing
Preface to fourth edition
Preface to fourth edition Some of the sports cars I wrote about a quarter of a century ago are still with us. I saw a few of them at the 1977 BARC Easter Monday meeting as they fought it out so valiantly over ten laps of the Thruxton circuit in the Classic Sports Car Race. It is a sobering thought that many of the readers of this new edition were not even born when I first attempted to analyse the technical make-up of such wonderful sports cars as the XK120, the Aston Martin DB2 and the Austin Healey'Hundred'. The greatest upheaval on the technical scene in recent years has been the challenge thrown out by government legislation around the world to increase safety and to reduce pollution. The former has virtually wiped out open-air motoring in several countries with warm climates, which is a pity. The latter has made it illegal in some countries for the enthusiast to tune his own car. This new edition therefore contains no advice on tuning, since this must now be considered as a professional prerogative demanding sophisticated and expensive instrumentation. Apart from a general up-dating of all the subject matter we have added four design studies, partly historical, partly technical, on the Jaguar, the Lotus, the Mercedes and the Porsche. The author is particularly indebted to these four companies for their assistance in providing so much useful technical information on their products. Grateful acknowledgement is also given to the many sports-car manufacturers who supplied technical data, drawings, photographs and handbooks, and to all the other component and specialist equipment manufacturers who gave such valuable assistance. The question of units for this new edition is a difficult one. Great Britain, in
viii The Sports Car theory at least, is now using metric (SI) units. Power should be expressed in kilowatts, torque in newton metres and speed in metres per second. Not only is the British motor industry reluctant to make the change, but the majority of our English speaking readers are in America, Canada and Australia where metric units are only used by scientists. In general in this edition we
