Honestly love how this channel has been developing over the years, been following you from the beginning. Always new and interesting stuff and the voice over is so unique and recognizable, one of my favorite creators
Hey, french here. Thanks for not butchering french names and for presenting this automobile gem of ours (that sadly ended in complicated economical and political turmoil) to your half a million subscribers. How many ever heard that name? Probably not many... If you need an obscure subject with aerospace connection, look for Gnome et Rhône motorcycles ;)
It's always because of politics. In the case of Matra, the downfall came when they were forced by then president Valéry Giscard D'Estaing to buy to bailout the Hachette group, a book edition company that produced books for national education board. Valéry Giscard D'Estaing is also known for killing the Aérotrain, the late 60's very high speed air cushioned hover train (to help keeping afloat the monopoly of train builder Alsthom and the french national railway company SNCF) , and the CYCLADES distributed packet computer network, that predates TCP/IP internet protocol and packet transmission by nearly a decade (so the national and monopolistic telecom company France Télécom can launch their proprietary and stupid Minitel). It's not hard to find a politics embezzlement whenever a french thing fails. If we stick to automobile manufacturers, politics have also happily killed in a way or another Facel, Venturi, and, more recently and ignominiously, Heuliez coachbuilder, that was forced to build stupid electric cars that no one cared about.
In addition to post-war French marques like Facel, what other defunct French luxury and sports-car automakers had a pretty decent shot of surviving and even thriving as independents after the war? Also were there any plans to revise French puissance fiscale taxation to something more lenient and (within reason of course) more export friendly for France's domestic luxury and volume cars?
Excellent video! I've read about Matra on several occasions but this video clears up a lot of mystery for me very informative and those V12 sound amazing
AAAAAH yes, finally the legendary MS670 of Henri Pescarolo show in your channel. I'm so glad ppl can here the best sounding V12 ever made ^^ps: and your french is more than OK Visio C:
My favorite and personal best sounding F1 engine ever was Ferrari's last F1 V12, the Tipo 044/1 found in the 412 T2 race car, 3.0L V12 700-760hp @17,000 rpm..still gives me chills everytime I hear it.
I seen to remember reading that when they bolted the engine to the concrete foundation of the Dyno, they lost 15hp due to increased friction, presumably because the out of balance (even of a V12) caused more friction on the main bearings than when the engine block was free to vibrate.
I know that I'm going to be flamed but in the ear bleed category I'd say that the Mazda Le Man's 787b rotary is the equal to this. Love it or hate it that sucker was loud.
Thanks for that vid ! Obtaining a very pure, completely recognizable sound was one of the objectives set by JL Lagardère for the designers of these v12
Those were heady days in F1. Fantastic advances in technology every year (that would eventually trickle down to NASA) and absolute music to the ears! Now F1 cars are growling, farting, heavy beasts that are irrelevant to the advancement of technology beyond the circus of the show.
The strict rules are part of this. A huge part of why Wankels died imo was because they were banned from running in Le Mans after Mazda won with their 26B (people call rotaries unreliable and yet, Mazdaspeed engineers tore the 26B down after the race and said it easly could run another 24 hours without any maintenance). Imo, there needs to be more classes of racing with looser tech regulations. Put restraints on things like vehicle size and weight, max HP, etc. Not the engine configuration, size or placement
@@kg_canuck wankels are dirty and thirsty they are gone. Loose regulations quickly leads to cost spiraling out of control unless it i done like the current LMH and LMDh, use any engine you like but car perfomance is balanced to make everyone competive
@@kg_canuck wankels weren’t banned, the rules were already in place to force everyone to use a 3.5L piston engine for the year after the 787b won. Wankels lost in the big market because of emissions laws: they burned oil, and were too dirty to reasonably meet the regulations. There’s no conspiracy against wankels, they were just worse for the situation.
I loved the sound of those Matra V12s and thought that they were better than the Ferraris. I was at Brands Hatch when Chris Amon took pole position in a Matra powered Ligier on the Saturday qualifying but on Sunday morning during the 'warm up' he missed a gear, buzzed the engine and bent a valve. He lasted only six laps in the race before it went bang!
Building on and improving a design is an engineering feat by itself. Reverse engineering is as old as the combustion engine itself and continues today. There's companies whose whole job is reverse-engineering new cars so car companies can study how its competitors are making cars. It's not a secret either you can look this stuff up. Pretty wild
Le Mans 1972, the Hill/Pescarolo Matra screamed into the esses past the fairground. The down-change was straight from the opening guitar of "My Sweet Lord", George Harrison. Check it out. Peoww, peoww, peoww.
Mario Andretti once described the Matra engine in the UOP Shadow F1 cars as “An engine that even sounds powerful.” First heard one at the 1973 Watkins Glen GP. More noise than you can shake a stick at.
Great insight! As a young lad, I loved the Matra MS 120s, which looked as brutal as they sounded but I was most unhappy that the team concentrated on the Le Mans programme, eventually at the expense of F1. But for a puncture, Beltoise could have won the French GP in 1970 and Amon was in with a good chance for victory the Italian GP in ’71 until he accidentally removed his helmet visor. In ’72, Amon - then Matra’s sole F1 driver - put his brand new MS120D on pole at the French GP and dominated the race until a puncture relegated him to third. Unfortunately, probably at huge frustration for Amon, Matra didn’t develop that car and it became increasingly less competitive before they pulled the plug! A huge waste of great potential!
My wife and I attended the 1970 British F1 GP. We were there on the Friday morning to walk the paddock but it rained steadily all day. So we hiked over to the main grandstand which was empty but provided decent shelter from the rain even if it didn't from the cold, gusty wind. Not many drivers were going out which was not surprising, given the conditions. But one did. Jean Pierre Beltoise took the V12 Matra out as the conditions eased and it was magnificent! The very first lap out he came howling around Woodcote Corner onto the start/finish straight. The old one, not today's. He must have been flat out and the sound from that engine resonated like the pipes of a church organ. The alto soprano pipes. It was so loud and pitched so high it was enough to erase your brain completely. Absolutely magnificent. And our several weeks old baby daughter slept right through it.
I remeber the Matra Simca Bagheera car, unfortunately it did not have a Matra engine, but 2 ordinary carengines coupled togeter. 3 seats, with the driver in the midle. But it was a beautifull car.
I think this sounds even better: Georg Plasa's BMW134 with the Judd 5.3 litre V8 revving close to 12000 rpm. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cyqJxXolico.html Enjoy ! 😁
God they sounded good...my dad had a Simca 1300; when I showed him that a prototype was made with 180hp his eyes got huge! 😳 He said "180hp would've made mine pull wheelies!".
Yeah, that V12 sounds amazing, but I've been searching maps of Hungary for hours and hours, and I still can't find a mountain named "Mt. Mecanique Aviation Traction". What? Really? Oh... never mind.
The V12- the greatest engine configuration in history! Maybe not the fastest or quickest design, but the greatest balance of performance, music and emotion. This gives me goosebumps.
Would have liked to have seen a mstra simca Bagheera with that 180Hp 1300cc 4pot. Brilliant beautyful car with superb chassis. but only 82 hp. It stil reached 110 mph with Simca 1100 engine with a Cw value id .3 at he time
Honda RA300 is a good comparison of 60's V12. Different kind of beast but special. In terms of sound the Honda was more raw and Matra more refined i'd say.
Was the Matra modified Simca Poissy motor intended primarily just for motorsport or for road-going as a way to update the aging Poissy motor to 16-valves? Also was it converted to OHC or DOHC? Read Chrysler Europe planned to turbocharge the Poissy motor with the 1982 Talbot Horizon Turbo concept.
Lovely sounding engine but not as reliable as the near-bulletproof (and, most importantly, cheap) DFV in F1. The 1973 oil crisis would have had an impact on racing, probably why the flat-12 was never properly developed. Renault had already developed a V6, partially funded by the French government too, and had started development first with their car getting to the grid in 1977 driven by Jean-Pierre Jabouille, so that one is unlikely to have gotten to F1 anyway.
Cool video, but what is the deal with the driver at the very end of the video only wearing one glove? Glove on his left hand, and bare handed on his shifter hand? Not familiar with that practice, if anyone else is, please enlighten me, lol
For someone who does not speak French at all, I am okay with that. This language is freaking tough with pronunciation. I could have leave that as is, not use Google to hear the real pronunciation and do not even bother nailing it anyhow closely.
