From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Future car design principles, including rear engines, wheelbase, weight distribution, and aerodynamics.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 170\2\ img161 | |
| Date | 17th June 1933 guessed | |
| forward reduce wind resistance by forcing more air through a given radiator. The dimension from front wheels to windshield is being reduced, not so much to prevent fender-shake as to get rear passenger's backs in line with the rear wheels and avoid the hellish overhang that spoilt our lines. Noses are going boldly forward to fill up the useless box-canyon between the front horns. Starting handles will be gone I think by next year. More efficient use of wheelbase and better placing of passengers on the wheelbase are dominant ideas. It does not follow that the passenger-group ought to be central on the wheelbase, as on Burney's car, as if so on the shorter cars, the front passengers and driver may be disturbed by lateral accelerations in cornering. After consideration the fault with rear engines seems the overloaded rear tyres. The c.g. almost central when the car is normally loaded seems essential. Burney's reasoning for a 2/3 - 1/3 division is deliberate misrepresentation of the N.P.L. work on braking and is not borne out by anything we have done. On the other hand such a division absolutely needs twin tyres at the rear if the car is to corner without nosing in at alarming angles, tearing the tread off the rear tyres, and eventually going into a flat spin. Rear engines will come I think so soon as we make the total weight of the power unit half the present figure relative to total car weight, so that it can be put in the rear without disturbing present central position of c.g. This fits in with your own idea of the use of superchargers on r.{Sir Henry Royce} engine cars. I have seen some much better looking designs of r.{Sir Henry Royce} engine cars than Burney's. Notably a man called Hoffmann here has some really fine ideas. Everything including the radiator will have to be at the rear, and means must be found to cool it without using the nose-pressure. This takes all the masses off the front end and presumably the frame might as well be abandoned in front and the suspension mounted on the stiff body cowl. Allowing for the essential number of approach shots, the questions to be answeres, and the obvious necessity of the change, I should guess that Jan.1937 would see acceptance of re-engines. These cars will have to be properly heated. Burney's forward radiator was a joke as a car heater. Everyone who rode in his car had influenza. | ||