Yep. Gary Bettenhausen had one in a USAC spring car. Black 99. He also moved the fuel to side pods from the tail and it had an on board starter and could start going from a dead stop without a push truck. Freaked out the USAC community at the time! The one jealous car owner, at a race in Salem Indiana filed a protest claiming the car had illeagal areo-dynamics because the tops on the side fuel pods had a very minor incline front front to back. The De Dion suspension was also removed due to stability issues. But it was certainly some of the first innovations to that sport in many, many years!
I once had a Clark Motor Home, maybe a 1969(?) that had a 225 slant six Dodge engine and it had a de Dion rear axle, but I don't know who made these axles. Anyone know of plans to built one's own de Dion rear for something under 400 HP ? I'm thinking of twin cantilever leaf springs (nostalgia) like John Cobbs Naiper Lion speed record racer, circa 1928.
Don't know whether this has been mentioned, but one significant problem I've seen in the execution of a DeDion or IRS is the failure to recognize the positional shift of the constant percent antisquat lines. The result is terrible squat on acceleration. With the DeDion or IRS, the lines pass through the tire centerline rather than through the tire patch. A similar problem arises when the drivetrain package from a front wheel drive is installed in the rear of a car. The instant center for the front wheel drive car is situated to minimize dive on braking. So, considerable work is needed to change its position for decent acceleration attitude.
Most DeDions have telescoping axle shafts but the Rover used a telescoping dead axle. Reason, the axle shafts will bind under acceleration.
The P6 went to a lot of trouble to avoid using CV joints! It had fixed-length, Hooke-jointed drive shafts, and thus required the axle itself to be variable in width. The sliding joint devised to achieve that also enables the "longitudinal Watts linkages" location, because it allows a bit of angular difference between the two parts. In all it's not an inelegant solution, as it uses complexity committed to for one reason to address at least one other reason, but it isn't the definitive DeDion. There is at least one well-known website which pooh-poohs the DeDion axle because of the compexity of the Rover system, as if that complexity were essential to the DeDion principle as such. It isn't. Most sensible would be to use CV joints in the way which has become standard on virtually every FWD car out there: one joint on each drive shaft, usually the inner, has a telescoping facility, either by the ball grooves of one element being formed straight rather than curved ("plunge" joints) or the inner joint sliding on a spline off the differential.
Allard flailing arm front suspension For those who are not familiar... Allard suspension made of a Ford axle sawn in half And the same in action
I wish my dad were still alive, he would have been rolling on the floor if he'd heard that! and yes, Allards won a lot of races, but it was in spite of the front suspension, not because of it. Great photos, especially this one...
RE Allards winning a lot of races... I suspect it was because of his American approach - put a huge ass engine it! Gary
De dion rears and hot rods don't really go together. It's more a sports car setup. Ok, you may find one or two isolated examples but they are not mainstream hot rod fare. Personally I don't think they have "the look" of a hot rod. Mart.
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