REMEMBER those car playing cards?
If you were born before the age of the Internet and have even an ounce of petrol running through your veins, then those playing cards with car pictures and specifications would be part of your childhood memory.
My personal favourite was the absolutely mad Pininfarina concept car, the Ferrari 512S Modulo.
Designer Paolo Martin, who worked at Pininfarina at the time, squinted so hard into the crystal ball that he came up with what looked like a lethal, sharpened blancmange wedge that had just been dropped onto the floor by a careless child.
The said jelly dessert fell straight onto a set of four wheels and tyres and the result was a vision so far out that it still looks futuristic today, 47 years later. Whatever Paolo was smoking, he has a duty to share it with everyone.
Apart from the fact that it looks more like a space escape pod than Italian supercar, it also happens to be built on a pukka Ferrari Can-Am racer chassis.
The race car that donated its chassis was the 512S, one of the most spectacular looking Can-Am racers of the time.
In fact, Can-Am racers of the late 1960s and early 1970s are still among the most spectacular competition cars ever made. Thanks to rudimentary aerodynamics and super powerful engines, these cars were barely driveable and could reach tremendous speeds.
They came with elongated bodies as manufacturers tried very hard to get some semblance of downforce to prevent the cars lifting off and slamming the drivers upside down over every bump and crest.
Since they were racing cars, the chassis had next to nothing ground clearance and everything was positioned so close to the ground that none of the components were any higher than a few inches above the tyre height.
It was this low slung chassis that made the Modulo possible.
In fact, if it weren’t for the pesky need to give the passengers any headroom, the Modulo could have been designed to be as tall as the tyres.
When you see the picture of the Modulo on the playing cards, no one could really figure out how people would get in and out because there were no obvious doors. Well that’s because there was no obvious door.
The entire glasshouse and half of the flank would slide forward and tilt to allow passenger some room to attempt entry.
The entire roof/door structure was so thin, it looked like it was made of origami paper. If the passenger so much as sneezed, the entire top might just pop out like those James Bond cars with ejection seats.
The Modulo was a running prototype, because it was built on a running chassis but we are not sure if the car could have survived the explosive power of the five-litre V-8 competition engine that cranked out 550hp at 8,500rpm.
This is one serious piece of kit designed to hit really high speed for sustained periods thanks to the nature of the long-distance nature of Can-Am and World Championship for Sports Prototype racing. The 512s were also entered to compete in Le Mans and so were built to endure.
In 1970, when the improbably fast and incredibly durable Porsche 917s took the first three places, two privately entered 512s came fourth and fifth with the two factory versions retiring.
The problem with Le Mans is also its greatest feature, the Mulsanne straight which runs for nearly 14km uninterrupted, allowing cars to reach suicide speeds and they have to sustain that for a few minutes.
The Mulsanne Straight is where the beasts are sorted out from the real monsters. It can ruin all but the toughest cars and engines.
They have since put chicanes on the Mulsanne in the interest of keeping drivers alive but at the expense of the spectacle. I think the world has forgotten its priorities. Motor racing is modern gladiatorial contest - people go to see carnage.
The surprise of no one, the Modulo never went into production but Martin went on to design a few nice cars such as the exceedingly elegant Fiat 130 Coupe, the interestingly awkward Lancia Beta Montecarlo, the intriguingly panda-like Rolls-Royce Camargue.
The black surround for the Camargue’s headlamps remind me of Pandas, so sue me.
He also designed the surprisingly charmless Peugeot 104.
The Modulo is in the care of renowned collector James Glickenhaus, so we know the future is safe.
P.S. I have included a photo of a blancmange, which is pronounced blur-monje, so that you can better understand how much I like and despise the Modulo at the same time.
It is basically milk jelly, the simplest after meal-ingestion known to man. Well if you don’t include things that tip out of bottles. I love jelly but I hate milk jelly.
cbt@nst. com. my