UNSUNG HEROES - #5 - The Piper GTR 

did you re-built / restored / repaired this car in Wokingham back around 1968 ish ?

kapil busawah Thanks bud 👍

@@HSGAutomotive I Just Recently Subbed Because Of This Series, Mike! Thank You For Having These Vids! Really Interesting Series!

Nice

It is the type of weird that GT often features.

I'm not sure but I believe that the driver was one David Piper who was the boss of Piper Cars. He would beg, borrow or buy any car he could get his hands on to race at Le Mans. He was also recruited by Steve McQueen to help supply cars, drive and help on the technical side of the production of the film 'Le Mans'. During filming Piper was supposed to deliberately crash one of the cars but things went wrong and he lost a leg in the accident. He continued to collect and race cars and I believe he had two of the Alan Mann Ford P68 3 liter GTs painted in emerald green. The Len Terry designed P68 was even more aerodynamic than the Piper GTR but suffered from compromised engineering, bad reliability and an aerodynamic flaw that nobody understood at the time. Maybe that would make a good video in the future?

@@mikehipperson I have no idea what car you're talking about.

@@EpicB The P68 had it's debut at the 1968 BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch where 2 cars were entered but only one started as Jack Brabham considered his car too dangerous to drive. The sister car qualified in 6th place driven by Bruce McLaren and actually led the race for a few laps until the rubber donut (off a Hillman Imp) failed on the driveshaft on the 12th lap. Putting 410 bhp from a Ford DFV through it was not a good idea! The car's layout had been compromised by Ford and Cosworth not being willing to supply the engine due to their commitment to Lotus in F1 so it was originally built to take the 3 litre Serrenisima V8 which was heavier, less powerful and couldn't be used as a stressed member like the DFV. Eventually Ford/Cosworth relented and supplied the team the engines but it was too late to remove the engine mounting 'horns' so the units weren't fitted as Alan Mann would have liked. The aerodynamic problem was due to the car being so very 'slippery' that the body created positive lift that it would cause the car to 'float' at high speed despite an air dam at the front radiator inlet and a full width kick up of the rear bodywork. This was exacerbated by Terry designing a tail that was supposed to cause low pressure area under it which, given the rudimentary nature of the understanding of aero at the time wasn't surprising. It was this that Jack Brabham objected to as he was getting understeer into a corner followed by a rapid transition to oversteer from mid corner to exit. McLaren just drove around the problem!

@@mikehipperson Okay, sure. I was just talking about a completely different car.

VALLY I'm currently working on a new one, but as with the cave mystery this one isn't going to be a murder.