The W12 Adventure
Life's W12 machine had been designed by the former Ferrari engineer Franco Rocchi, who had been responsible for, among others, Ferrari's famous 3-litre V8 for the 1970s 308 GTB and GTS. Rocchi's W12 plans dated back to a 1967 single-module W3 of 500 cc as a protoype for a 3 litre W18 Ferrari engine of a planned 480 hp. After his dismissal in 1980, Rocchi worked privately on an engine in a W12 configuration.
According to his concept, the engine had three banks of four cylinders; hence it was short like a V8 but taller than a regular V-banked engine. In France, Guy Nègre from Moteurs Guy Nègre worked on a similar machine that saw the light of day in 1989 before being tested privately in an out-dated AGS JH22 chassis. Apart from the W12 configuration, both engines bore no other similarities, nor were there any links between their designers.
Franco Rocchi's W12 was ready in the first half of the 1989 Formula One season. It was the time when turbocharged engines finally had faded away and everybody needed a normally aspirated motor. New engine manufacturers entered Formula One (such as Ilmor, Judd and Yamaha), and new ideas broke through. Carlo Chiti's Motori Moderni unsuccessfully tried to revive flat-12 engines, badged as Subarus and used by the Coloni team, whilst Renault and Honda developed V10 engines, propelling the Williams and McLaren teams to great success.
In this situation, the Italian tradesman Ernesto Vita hoped for fast money. He bought the rights to the W12 from Franco Rocchi and tried to supply the engine to a well-funded Formula One team. During 1989, Vita searched for a partner without any success. Finally, he gave up his search and decided to run the engine on his own in the 1990 Formula One season.
Read more about this topic: Life Racing Engines
Famous quotes containing the word adventure:
“Being human signifies, for each one of us, belonging to a class, a society, a country, a continent and a civilization; and for us European earth-dwellers, the adventure played out in the heart of the New World signifies in the first place that it was not our world and that we bear responsibility for the crime of its destruction.”
—Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908)