If you are 'of a certain age,' you will recall the ads in the back of magazines like 'Sports Cars Illustrated' (which became a very well-known magazine, anyone know without 'googling?') and 'Road & Track' for companies like MG Mitten, who sold car covers, and accessories for your car that had cachet as being, 'European,' or 'British,' like Raydyot teardrop mirrors (http://www.mgexp.com/phorum/read.php?1,2030816), Nardi steering wheels, and for the rally competitor, Curta 'coffee grinder' hand-held mechanical calculators, what everyone used to do the 'time-speed-distance' calculations during the rally (try looking up one of those on ebay, you'll be digging deep into your wallet!) http://www.ebay.com.au/csc/i.html?L...a&_sticky=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_sop=3&_sc=1 for our Southern Hemisphere friends' perusal
Well, here's an interesting article on the inventor of the Nardi steering wheel, a coveted and much-copied accessory on many sports cars of the 1960's, when airbags didn't exist with their huge black pads in the center of steering wheels, and you could admire the simple metal spokes and the shaped-wood thin rim of a 'proper' steering wheel. He was a designer and engineer, and had many futuristic designs, including a 1500 cc mid-engine race car, foreshadowing the John Cooper design which changed the modern open-wheeled rear-wheel drive racing car in the early 1960's. Looks to me like Cooper took Nardi's design of a light mid-engine design w/a smaller engine, and released his own version.
Anyway, plenty of interesting designs, and pics of Nardi's work, take a look. This car had one pod for the driver, and another for the engine, a design sometimes seen in Indy cars in the era of the 'roadsters,' when Offenhausers comprised most of the Indycar starting grid. Offenhauser made special 'laydown' engines to lower the c. of g. and the coefficient of drag, where the cyl head and cylinders were not 'upright,' but slanted sideways, like many bike engines slant their cylinders, either sideways as in the case of Moto Guzzi or BMW twins, or forward, like nearly every transverse mcy engine currently made.
http://www.motorpunk.co.uk/features/enrico-nardis-other-work/
Well, here's an interesting article on the inventor of the Nardi steering wheel, a coveted and much-copied accessory on many sports cars of the 1960's, when airbags didn't exist with their huge black pads in the center of steering wheels, and you could admire the simple metal spokes and the shaped-wood thin rim of a 'proper' steering wheel. He was a designer and engineer, and had many futuristic designs, including a 1500 cc mid-engine race car, foreshadowing the John Cooper design which changed the modern open-wheeled rear-wheel drive racing car in the early 1960's. Looks to me like Cooper took Nardi's design of a light mid-engine design w/a smaller engine, and released his own version.
Anyway, plenty of interesting designs, and pics of Nardi's work, take a look. This car had one pod for the driver, and another for the engine, a design sometimes seen in Indy cars in the era of the 'roadsters,' when Offenhausers comprised most of the Indycar starting grid. Offenhauser made special 'laydown' engines to lower the c. of g. and the coefficient of drag, where the cyl head and cylinders were not 'upright,' but slanted sideways, like many bike engines slant their cylinders, either sideways as in the case of Moto Guzzi or BMW twins, or forward, like nearly every transverse mcy engine currently made.
http://www.motorpunk.co.uk/features/enrico-nardis-other-work/
