FORGOTTEN HISTORY:
Ford’s 4wd Formula 1 car
Thinking that future F1 cars would need four-wheel drive, in the late 1960s Cosworth and Ford designed and brand-new car — this is the story of what happened to it.
To quote Keith Duckworth of Cosworth: “The four-wheel drive F1 car? Well it was one of my daftest ideas.” Even so, at the time, it looked and seemed like a good idea. Duckworth had just designed the worldbeating DFV F1 engine, he thought he could see the logic of mating this with a four-wheel drive system, (remember, the secret of making a race car work is to make optimum use of the rubber!), and Walter Hayes, his paymaster at Ford, encouraged him to think big.
Thinking that future F1 cars would need four-wheel drive, Duckworth attracted Robin Herd from McLaren to design his new car. Herd started work in January 1968, and designed the basic layout around a sharpedged aluminium monocoque. Duckworth schemed up the centre gearbox, Mike Hall added his experience, and Hewland was also involved in transmission manufacture.
It all took too long, for the first (and only) car did not run until the spring of 1969, when Duckworth’s partner, Mike Costin, was first to drive it. Rivals such a Lotus, McLaren and Matra had also joined the race — and the tyre manufacturers had made so much progress that four-wheel drive suddenly didn’t look important any more. Costin had found it difficult to drive, so had the younger race drivers, and no-one could make it turn competitive lap times at Silverstone.
Constant experimenting with front/rear torque split ratios, and with differential settings, seemed to lead nowhere. The original intention was that the split should be 40/60 percent (front/rear), but in testing it was found that a much higher ratio of rear torque gave the best, still disappointing, results. Keith Duckworth soon judged that the project was an expensive mistake. By mid-1969, several famous drivers had all tested the car, and all had found it wanting. Robin Herd left the company (to set up March, incidentally), and the F1 car went back into store. Later estimates showed that the project had cost £30,000 — for a car which never started a race, and at a time when a DFV engine cost £7500. It was not until the 1980s that the car was sent off to Tom Wheatcroft, for display in his museum at Donington Park.