History The Fastest Car in the World That Never Ran.

The motor probably went into an airplane, because that's where it came from. The DB603 was an aircraft engine, a larger version of the one that powered the famous Me-109 fighter. If you look closely, you'll see it is an inverted V12. The crank is at the top and the cylinders point down. My dad got to work with a DB601 in 1940. He worked in R&D at Wright Aircraft engines and the Brits sent over a captured DB601 for evaluation. My Dad said it was the nicest piece of engineering he had ever seen. The cylinders were held in the crankcase with special threaded collars. It took my Dad's team 3 months to reverse engineer the tool to hold the cylinder while turning the locking collar. The engine was also fuel injected.

 

Beatiful car......400+ kph....?.......well lets not forget that those guys had a delta winged jet powered bomber going into production as the war ended. It's no wonder there was a ****fight over the germanic scientific brains after VE day.
They were ahead of their time in a lot af ways............ruling the world was not one of their better idea's.

 

The Krauts had the edge on technology back in the day. Imagine where they would have been today if WWII hadn't gotten in the way of things.

Bob

 

No I've read before it was MPH. It was double what the record was at the time.

Someone with deep pockets should build an exact replica and see if it would have done it.

 

I can't and don't want to imagine how things would be if the NAZI's had not been stopped by WWII

 

Amazing build, the only thing I can relate to is the jackstands

 

It sure would be a great promotion if some executive decided to put it together and take it to the Salt after all these years.

 

It 's a centrifigal supercharger. Different from the GMC roots type with rotors. It has one big impeller wheel driven by the engine. They make boost at ungodly high rpms. Harry Miller used this type of blower on his supercharged Millers.

 

Again, it was 465 MPH, or 750kph they were shooting for.

 

I have to wonder if those spoke wheels would hold up at 400+ mph?

 

wire wheels and over 400mph eeeek

tires/wheels unspoken debreakin fuchken soone fo sure

 

In some stuff they were, like rocket populsion and synthetic fuels.But with electronics the Brits and even the Americans were far more advanced.The USA was the world's leader in turbo superchargers at that period of time. You also have to consider that in this country research was generally not funded by the gov't like Germany (Nazis) were at that time.And remember the Germans set many speed records by spending large sums of money with huge support teams.And almost all those records were broken by limited budget Hot Rods.

 

You sound jealous....

 

Funny coming from a guy with a distinctly AMERICAN car....

 

No...I've done quite a bit of personal research for my own reasons on various aspects of war tech and he's actually right...but don't take that as a smear towards your countrymens abilities. Only a fool would suggest they were incapable.

British Electronic technological superiority in Radar and ASDIC (Sonar) was one of the things that kept it from being occupied or successfully blockaded during the war.
IF Hitler had held back for a year or two and allowed his Electronic experts to perfect their capabilities...and allowed his Navy to reach a practical size...the war would have been a whole different ball game to fight.

Regardless...this is a car post...not a which country is superior post!

 

Technically a Turbocharger is an exhaust driven Supercharger

 

You are right.This was what my comment was about....
Some didn`t get it.
I should have put a smily in there.

 

Holy **** thats RAD

 

I heard some guy put it in a t-bucket.

 

Thanx for showing that wonderful beast. It is super cool! ~Sololobo~

 

nice auto mobile for sure but I think at that speed the side wings would have lifted the car off the ground around 300 there is no down force at the rear of the fins witch
would/could cause a lift issue. very forword thinking for sure

 

I believe the 465 MPH design speed.

The engineers and technicians over at Mercedes Benz read the newspapers also. They knew that both Eyston and Cobb had run 350+ mph at Bonneville in 1938 and that both cars likely had some more left. Building the 2nd fastest car in the world would not have been in the Mercedes mindset. To give thermselves some 'wrap around the arm' they 'set the bar' for a 750 kph / 465 mph design speed.
I likely would have done the same thing.

Piper106

 

Yup, some big drum brakes.

Piper106

 

If you look really close at the pictures in the first post, the cross section of the side wings meant they would have created downforce, not lift. Looks like the angle of incidence could have been adjusted in the shop / pit to increase or decrease the amount of downforce.

Piper106

 

What I would give to hear that thing at full song on the salt..............

 

They are the brake drums. Not a flywheel. Most likely made of aluminum with a steel liner.

 

LOL

so should I!

 

I doubt they would have stood up to anything close to that so it's probably something we'll never know. Even if an exact copy of the car was built, there'd bound to be changes in the brakes and wheels of no-one would let it run-and who would you get to get in there?

 

So effin bad***

 

Stupendous! what a gorgeous feat of craftsmanship.