Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again—Stephen King
The Tyrrell P34 commonly known as the “six-wheeler” was a Formula One race car that was created by chief designer Derek Gardner and raced in the 1978 F1 season. The car used four specially manufactured 10-inch-diameter wheels and tires at its front with two standard-sized wheels at the back. According to an F1 mechanic that I spoke with at Donnington Park race rack, the P34 used disc brakes from a Mini Cooper on those front wheels.
The six-wheeled Tyrrell P34 was considered to be one of the most radical entries to ever succeed in F1 competition and was one the most recognizable designs in the history of motorsports. The photo (at right) is of my late friend Steve Morgenstern sitting in what I thought (at the time) was a six-wheeled Tyrrell P34 when we were attending historic races a in England several years ago. Steve and I got to see the Tyrrell race but, as it turned out, he is actually sitting in a Williams F1 car. Thanks to our Senior International Correspondent John Larsen for the correction.
Before that Happened
While that was going on in 1978, Hispano-Suiza did it first in 1924, albeit with the wheels in a slightly different configuration as you can see below. This car you see is a 1924 Victoria town car, and was built in the company’s French factory and cost $35,000 at the time. That price translates into $644,319.30 in today’s dollars.
How I made this photograph: I composed this photograph Denver’s Forney Museum of Transportation to show the extreme length of the car and give some taste of the ambiance of the museum itself. It was made with a Canon EOS 60D and Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM lens (at 18mm) with an available light exposure of 1/40 sec at f/2.8 and ISO 800. It was then processed in Photoshop using Color Efex.
Hispano-Suiza is Spanish for ‘Spanish-Swiss’ and the company was founded in 1904 by Marc Birkigt and Damián Mateu and eventually had factories in Spain and France producing luxury cars. In 1968, Hispano-Suiza was taken over by the aerospace company Snecma. A relaunch of the Hispano-Suiza brand was made by the same founding family (4th generation of the Suqué Mateu Family) and the company is part of the Peralada Group. In 2019 they produced a fully-electric 1.119 HP hypercar called the “Hispano Suiza Carmen,” that has just four wheels.
- The Forney Museum of Transportation
- 4303 Brighton Blvd, Denver, CO 80216
- Thursday – Monday 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Closed: Tuesdays & Wednesday - Museum Parking is free