Edonis explained

I am not a habitual reader of the English edition of evo, but I was informed that you recently printed a short article called ‘The Edonis Scale’ (evo Archive, issue 293).

I wanted to share some details with readers who may not know much about this sports car.

The B Engineering Edonis was manufactured in 47 days by four engineers and a group of artisans who were mostly 80-plus years old. The wives would bring tortellini to us in the evenings to help us burn the midnight oil.

The car’s technical specification reflects what I would have done with the Bugatti EB110 if Romano Artioli had not constantly interfered in things.

For the Edonis I removed the drive to the front wheels and simplified the turbocharging, because the four turbos were a marketing gimmick rather than a performance advantage. The Edonis originally produced 680bhp, then one day I saw that the local Modenese fuel station had started supplying Shell V-power, with its higher octane (98 instead of 95). So that night I drew a piston with a higher compression ratio, probably a 0.3 increase on the previous value. When we ran the engine again on the dynamometer it could now safely produce 720bhp.

The car was also the first to fit the then-new Michelin PAX run-flat system; the wheels of the first prototype were expensively machined from solid aluminium ‘blanks’ to provide the exact profile for the new carcass. The system was then used by Renault and later on the Bugatti Veyron among others.

The colour is Rosso Pompeiano (Pompei Red) and the slightly odd headlights were the result of quite intense aerodynamic development to reach a speed of 360kph, a target which it narrowly missed (359.6kph, or 223mph) when tested at Nardo.

It is a shame that the parent company could not find sufficient funding to produce more cars, but the artisans and engineers involved have remained loyal to its maintenance and repair in the workshop in Campogalliano. Nicola Materazzi, Salerno, Italy