BENZ TROPFENWAGEN. Although Porsche set the fashion for rear-engined sports cars with the VW-based T
Although Porsche set the fashion for rear-engined sports cars with the VW-based Type 356/2 of 1949, the layout was anticipated over a quarter-century earlier by a German marque of equally high repute —Benz of Mannheim. Notably conservative, Benz amazed the automobile world in 1923 by fielding a team of revolutionary mid-engined Grand Prix racers, nicknamed Tropfenwagen (teardrop cars) owing to their streamlined shape. These cars employed principles patented earlier by the Bohemian inventor Dr Edmund Rumpler, a pioneer aircraft manufacturer who in 1921 had produced a radical mid-engined streamlined saloon car with irs. The racing Benz embodied the Rumpler-type chassis and cantilever springing, with swing axles at the rear and a rigid I-beam at the front. The engine was a Benz design, an advanced twin-ohc in-line six with 24 valves, electron pistons, twin Zenith carburet-tors, a built-up roller-bearing crankshaft, and roller big ends, which gave some 90bhp at 4500rpm. This engine was located between the cockpit (containing the driver and riding mechanic), and the rear axle, which it drove through a three-speed gearbox mounted in unit. Inboard rear brakes were employed, a separate crescent-shaped radiator was mounted above the engine cover, and the car had excellent stream-lining with a clean, rounded nose and tapering tail. Two of these revolutionary cars finished fourth and fifth in their only Grand Prix, the 1923 Italian, when they were well eclipsed in power and speed by the rival supercharged Fiats. Faced with a costly development programme at a time of dire inflation in Germany, Benz opted instead to convert two Tropfen-wagen into sports cars, entailing a slight lengthening of the wheel-base and the fitting of some very slick mudguards and headlights. In this form they weighed around 820kg and could achieve 150kph (95mph), winning several German hillclimbs in both 1924 and 1925. Regrettably the design was not developed further when Benz and Mercedes combined in 1926, and these fantastic cars, unappreciated portents of the future, were abandoned. Their in-fluence showed significantly, however, in the mid-engined Auto Union GP cars which appeared in 1934 and which won many Grands Prix between then and 1939.
Specification Engine: straight-six; 65 x 100mm, 1997cc; twin ohc; four valves per cylinder; twin Zenith carburettors; 90bhp at 4500rpm. Gearbox: three-speed manual. Chassis: pressed steel side members; front suspension by non-independent beam axle and cantilever leaf springs; rear suspension by swing axles and cantilever leaf springs; friction dampers; four-wheel drum brakes (inboard at rear). Dimensions: wheelbase 283cm/1111-in; front track 140cm/55in; rear track 130cm/51in.
