1948 Tarf Gilera |
Racers are renowned for their knack for circumventing daunting situations, finding solutions to problems considered insoluble and generally thinking outside the proverbial box. While many of the resulting insights prove to be breakthroughs, others do not, and there may be no better example of this than the creation of a handful of what have been called “Pontoon Cars.” Citing its derivation from the French word pont, for bridge, old Noah Webster defines “pontoon” as a “portable float used in building a floating temporary bridge.” Most of these cars, however, were bridges to little but frustration for their builders, yet variations of the idea regularly found a home in the realm of experimental automotive technology during the middle portion of the last century. The basic layouts of the resulting machines sought to emulate the twin floats of most seaplanes, while using one pontoon to carry the power train and seating the driver in the other. After that the commonalities diminish, as each designer took his own unique path toward essentially the same destination. Of course, these cars all appeared before racing’s rules became as excruciatingly restrictive as they are today, in a time when innovation was actually revered, but had the concept proved effective it would likely have been more widely adopted. Given the perspective of time, though, they may simply reflect that perhaps not all the dead ends of vehicular dynamics have yet been investigated. First to pursue the idea was famed driver and engineer Piero Taruffi, whose Tarf-Gilera (also known as the Italcorsa) was built in 1948. The unique machine sprang from Taruffi’s desire to build a car that embodied the features of a motorcycle, and its novel twin-pod layout carried its 500-cc, 120-degree V-Twin Guzzi engine and chain drive in the right pod, with the driver and fuel tank occupying the left one. The 50-hp engine breathed through an air intake in the nose of its pod, and all components were enclosed by beautifully crafted aluminum bodywork. It became the “Fastest 500 in the World” that November, traversing the flying kilometer at an average speed of just under 130 mph, one of six records it set that day. The suspension was fully independent—working longitudinally rather than laterally—but the steering was unconventional, as during construction the builders discovered that a normal steering wheel could not fit within the confines of the cockpit. Consequently, two levers, one on either side of the driver, were used to steer. A second version was built in 1951, this time with the driver in the right pod and a 1.7-liter Maserati 4-cylinder engine in the left. It recorded new marks for two-liter sports cars over the distances of 50 and 100 kilometers, 50 and 100 miles and one hour during record runs on the Appian Way south of Rome. During those sprints Taruffi also clocked speeds of 180.540mph for the flying mile and 185.483mph for the flying kilometer to claim the official records. Taruffi campaigned the car until 1957 with a variety of engines, later extending those standards with runs on the high banks at Monza between 1954 and 1957. |
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