The last time we retraced the evolution of car body design, we highlighted Bugatti’s Type 32 ‘Tank’, designed especially for the French Grand Prix of 1923. We mused that it was perhaps the first car to have all four of its wheels enclosed within its sides.
Naturally it caused a popular sensation – yet there was another car introduced in the very same race that attracted even more of Autocar’s attention: the Avions Voisin Type C6 Laboratoire.
It was a world away from other cars of its era, and today it appears like something from 1927’s groundbreaking sci-fi film Metropolis or some retro imagining in ‘steampunk’ style (à la Spyker).
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“While most racing car designers have endeavoured to approach airship lines – blunt end forward and long, tapering tail – the [C6] may be described as having the profile of an aeroplane wing,” we reported back in 1923.
Indeed, Gabriel Voisin was a famous aeronautical engineer: in 1907, he had become the first European to build an aeroplane that could fly for more than a minute, out of the world’s first commercial aircraft factory, which had then provided weaponry for the French Air Force in the Great War.
This proved such a spiritual burden on him that he decided to switch to designing cars instead.
We continued about the C6: “The undersurface is absolutely flat and brought as near to the road as possible, and the upper surface has a considerable camber.
The entering edge is brought to a point, the radiator projects slightly above the upper surface, the engine projects even less, the driver and mechanic continue the line of the wing, the petrol tank is behind them in the greatest section of the wing, and the trailing edge is brought down to a point.
“By reducing the track at the rear to [about 75cm], the two rear wheels are recessed with the body of the car, and the rear axle, springs and shock absorbers are entirely inside.
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