1975 Colombo 1175 F1 Racecar (Patreon)
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I just saw a post about the Colombo 1175 F1 car that never made it past the drawing board. I'm curious if any of you would want us to create this car for Assetto Corsa. Perhaps it could be a paid mod since it is a defunct brand, but I'm not sure what the interest is for weird unfinished F1 projects like this car.
The 1175 was designed with eight narrower than normal wheels (for the time) with the rear wheels being only 8 inches wide. These wheels were to be arranged in pairs though each wheel moved independently from each other as they were not locked solid to each other.
The car was to be powered by a V8 engine, I assume it would have used a Cosworth DFV V8 as that engine was so popular at that time.
The brakes would have attempted to incorporate innovative technologies. There were to be steel drum brakes on each of 8 wheels. My understanding, though admittedly based off of limited and somewhat confusing information, is that these drum brakes would have had a more modern disc brake caliper working inside the drum to exert pressure onto the brake shoes. Colombo, the designer, stated that testing indicated that the brakes could sustain higher surface temperature as a result of these innovations.
I doubt this car would have been very successful. The car would have been extremely heavy and, in my opinion, it would have had poor performing brakes (putting a disc break inside a drum brake will only lead to a lack of cooling and worse performance). At fast tracks like Monza these downsides would not overcome the slight gains in aerodynamic slipstreaming and the car would have likely fallen off the pace over the course of a race as its brakes overheated, and then at more technical circuits the car would have been a disaster altogether.