Do you know who (Sauber, Mercedes or a third party) designed and built the engines of the Sauber sportscar, which was a Le Mans winner in early 90s' ??
SB
Sauber-Mercedes (semi F1 related)
Started by
SB
, Sep 09 1999 18:21
4 replies to this topic
#1
SB
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Posted 09 September 1999 - 18:21
Dear all,
Do you know who (Sauber, Mercedes or a third party) designed and built the engines of the Sauber sportscar, which was a Le Mans winner in early 90s' ??
SB
Do you know who (Sauber, Mercedes or a third party) designed and built the engines of the Sauber sportscar, which was a Le Mans winner in early 90s' ??
SB
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#2
Pit Babe
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Posted 10 September 1999 - 00:03
Wasn't it Mercedes? Sauber was reportedly an impressive outfit with the Merc engines. In fact, Merc was the one to drag Sauber into F1.
#3
Pascal
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Posted 10 September 1999 - 02:55
The Sauber-Mercedes association was originaly Peter Sauber's idea. He was looking for a powerful engine for his endurance car in the early-80's, and came up with the idea of blowing a roadgoing Mercedes 5 litre V8 engine with 2 turbos. I may well be wrong, but I think that Heini Mader was in charge of developing it. Note that at that time, Mercedes was going to great lenghts to dissociate itself from what seemed to be a crazy project.
Their first entry at Le Mans came to a premature stop when their only car, driven by John Nielsen, took off at the end of the Mulsanne straight (why does that sound familiar?) and disintegrated at landing. But Sauber came back a year later with what was basically the same car. The only difference was that he had found some funding from YvesSaintLaurent perfumes, hence the new name of the car: the Kouros-Mercedes.
At about the same time, a spectacular change was taking place in the Daimler-Benz' marketing strategy. Motorsport, which had been a taboo subject since their terrible crash in Le Mans back in the 50's, was slowly becoming a top priority. And what better way to overcome a taboo than to go back to the very place it originated? That's why Sauber took advantage of the increasingly obvious support from the German carmaker. AEG (itself a subsidiary of Daimler-Benz) had replaced Kouros on the car's livery, and when Saubers began to win races in the late 80's, they also found themselves a new silver colour, courtesy of Mercedes.
The same progression was meant to take place when Sauber got dragged to Formula 1 by its powerful backer, but the latter lost patience after a couple of years and decided to embark on the McLaren boat. But that's a whole different story...
Their first entry at Le Mans came to a premature stop when their only car, driven by John Nielsen, took off at the end of the Mulsanne straight (why does that sound familiar?) and disintegrated at landing. But Sauber came back a year later with what was basically the same car. The only difference was that he had found some funding from YvesSaintLaurent perfumes, hence the new name of the car: the Kouros-Mercedes.
At about the same time, a spectacular change was taking place in the Daimler-Benz' marketing strategy. Motorsport, which had been a taboo subject since their terrible crash in Le Mans back in the 50's, was slowly becoming a top priority. And what better way to overcome a taboo than to go back to the very place it originated? That's why Sauber took advantage of the increasingly obvious support from the German carmaker. AEG (itself a subsidiary of Daimler-Benz) had replaced Kouros on the car's livery, and when Saubers began to win races in the late 80's, they also found themselves a new silver colour, courtesy of Mercedes.
The same progression was meant to take place when Sauber got dragged to Formula 1 by its powerful backer, but the latter lost patience after a couple of years and decided to embark on the McLaren boat. But that's a whole different story...
#4
Keith Sawatsky
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Posted 10 September 1999 - 04:26
You're right Pascal.
The bare block of the Mercedes SL500 roadster formed the foundation for the engine in the car you're talking about.
[This message has been edited by Keith Sawatsky (edited 09-09-1999).]
The bare block of the Mercedes SL500 roadster formed the foundation for the engine in the car you're talking about.
[This message has been edited by Keith Sawatsky (edited 09-09-1999).]
#5
SB
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Posted 10 September 1999 - 11:35
Thanks you all for the information provided.
SB
SB
