hello piper?

tblincoe · 13 Oct 2004, 05:00 (Ref:1122870)

what ever became of the piper designs car? i know they only constructed a 40% scale windtunnel model but after the time spent on the CAD program as well as the windtunnel work why didn't anyone take this car and actually build it? i mean it looks like a very aerodynamically sound design and the head designer was also the head designer on the DBA-Zytek. check it out for those of you who dont remember...

http://www.piperdesign.co.uk/lmp900.html

marcush. · 13 Oct 2004, 06:07 (Ref:1122887)

looks like pipers designs have inspired lola with their new car....
and it gives some indication how zytek might move on in case of fair weather coming up...

KWM · 13 Oct 2004, 08:12 (Ref:1122953)

Actually Will Phillips was Chief Designer on the Reynard 02S (also known as DBA/Zytek), a senior designer from the 02S did leave the project and go to Piper as Chief Designer after designing the monocoque for the 02S. The Piper car does look very nice, but its not a 2004 spec car and was designed before the new regs were concluded therefore i would imagine that nothing was ever manufactured for the 2004 regs except the aero model.

ChironWSC · 13 Oct 2004, 08:34 (Ref:1122961)

I to was very suprised that Piper have not built a car to the new Regs LMP1/2 because they where the guys that did all the wind tunnel testing for the FIA for the new regs. So alot of the wind tunnel work would have been paid for by the FIA. I can't help but thinking that the FIA and Piper had an agreement that they could not build a car to the new regs for a certain amount of time because they would of had such an advantage over the other constructors.
Also looking on there website the cad drawing on there is of an LMP1 design looks like the car they used for the FIA testing.

Henry

KWM · 13 Oct 2004, 12:15 (Ref:1123119)

There was no such agreement, the regs were created by a technical working group (TWG) involving representatives from all manufacturers and all information from the testing was made available for all members of the TWG in order for the correct decisions to be made for the new regs and for all members to understand.

tblincoe · 13 Oct 2004, 13:14 (Ref:1123188)

here's what happened: Piper was commisioned to make a scale model of a car to help the Technical Working Group draw up the new regs for 2004. there was a move to create the car with International Racing Management (IRM) in 2003, but the idea was scrapped due to "unforseen circumstances" (read: lack of money).

what i dont get is why someone like Zytek, who is a small manufacturer and doesnt have the money right now required to do the large-scale aero work in order to make a new car, doesn't go to Piper and say, give us the design for X amount of dollars and we'll build it and race it in 2006. the aero work has already been done and by the way it is an LMP1 spec car. the 40% scale model shown is the car Piper was designing in 2002-03 as an LMP900. the CAD model down in the lower right hand corner is the LMP1 car that was created for the TWG and it was tested in a wind tunnel, the pics of that model were never released.

KWM · 13 Oct 2004, 14:44 (Ref:1123310)

The IRM-Piper car was never going to be LMP1, that car was only ever designed to LMP900 regs before the LMP1 aero work even started. The LMP900 model was then used after the "unforseen circumstances" for the FIA model. The problem is that the aero work doen so far has been in the direction of safety and research into aero characteristics and has not been through a great deal of "performance" aero investigation, its just a generic 20004 LMP1 car... it still needs work, and for small manufacturers taking on that design would still need to carry out further tunnel testing, further detail design work on bodywork surfacing for full size parts, and then the large expense of patternwork and moulds to actually make the parts... so buying the design still doesnt reduce the costs much... you can expect any new racecar design and tooling costs to be in the order of 1.5-2.5m Dollars!

nsxr · 13 Oct 2004, 18:03 (Ref:1123503)

oh yeah there website site said they helped out the Rusport team sort there lola's aero before the serson started. Plus theres a cad model of there car with the p1 regs on it. they prodably have a good car but no money to build it or run it.

Tim Northcutt · 13 Oct 2004, 18:09 (Ref:1123506)

A long time ago, someone posted that there would have to be orders for a minimum of four Piper chassis for it to be worht the time and effort to put one on the race track....

Can't remember who wrote that....nor can I remember the thread name...but I do remember reading it here on the Forum

JAG · 13 Oct 2004, 19:22 (Ref:1123572)

Quote:

Originally posted by Tim Northcutt
A long time ago, someone posted that there would have to be orders for a minimum of four Piper chassis for it to be worht the time and effort to put one on the race track....

Can't remember who wrote that....nor can I remember the thread name...but I do remember reading it here on the Forum

That was in Autosport over a year ago. One FIA SCC team was apparently interested, but that was the last anyone heard.

JAG · 13 Oct 2004, 19:26 (Ref:1123577)

Quote:

Originally posted by tblincoe

what i dont get is why someone like Zytek, who is a small manufacturer and doesnt have the money right now required to do the large-scale aero work in order to make a new car,

I had an e-mail from Zytek a few months back saying they are working on future projects but could not announce anything yet.

They are presumablly working on a new LMP1 for 2006.

KWM · 13 Oct 2004, 21:33 (Ref:1123730)

I can translate that statement in our business - it means we are doing nothing, we are looking for a deal but havent found one hence nothing to announce.... but we dont want to say that!

paul-collins · 13 Oct 2004, 23:32 (Ref:1123838)

Quote:

Originally posted by Tim Northcutt
A long time ago, someone posted that there would have to be orders for a minimum of four Piper chassis for it to be worht the time and effort to put one on the race track....

That makes sense. Multimatic were counting on selling 5 of their Daytona Prototypes in order to break even - and that's with a closed marketplace.

MulsanneMike · 14 Oct 2004, 00:12 (Ref:1123847)

Quote:

Originally posted by paul-collins
That makes sense. Multimatic were counting on selling 5 of their Daytona Prototypes in order to break even - and that's with a closed marketplace.

Price caps really hurt manufacturers as they are typically unrelaistic given the cost of manufacture. Ask Dallara how much they make on IRL chassis, I bet its not much...Good thing the ACO has never felt a price cap was necessary!

paul-collins · 14 Oct 2004, 00:31 (Ref:1123849)

Quote:

Originally posted by MulsanneMike
Price caps really hurt manufacturers as they are typically unrelaistic given the cost of manufacture. Ask Dallara how much they make on IRL chassis, I bet its not much...Good thing the ACO has never felt a price cap was necessary!

Yes and no... It's one of the things I think Grand Am had a reasonable idea on. Price caps with limited market choice means that you (the chassis mfgr) are only competing against a set number of other mfgrs. So, in theory, you ought to get a reasonable share of the business, so long as you make a decent enough product.

Hey, a managed economy worked in Russia, right?

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