Geek McLaren F1 question.

[Whitney-Paine]

According to the interweb (so it must be right!) the dimensions of the original F1 are:
Length - 4288mm
Width - 1820mm
Height - 1140mm
Wheelbase - 2718mm

Now the Golden Section - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio - as used throughout history to more or less define good aesthetics is a ratio of 1.618 approx.

Now if you divide the McLaren F1's:
Width/Height you get: 1.596
Length/Wheelbase: 1.577

In other words pretty damn close to ideal.

So I am wondering whether the golden ratio came into play when the car was being designed? My family are wondering, why I don't get out more..........

A quick "Google" shows that designers use this ratio a lot, I just wonder if it was used for the F1?

[RobM77]

I've just checked the big book on the design of the car and it's not in there. It wouldn't surprise me if it was deliberate though

[sniff diesel]

One for the Flemke thread?

[Futuramic]

I wouldn't be surprised. The golden ratio is pretty basic stuff; I learned about it whilst still at school in technology.

However the McLaren F1 was designed to strict aerodynamic parameters to be the ultimate car, so that would have taken precedent over any aesthetic concerns.

Actually it looks great anyway so who cares.

[RobM77]

The thing I admire the most about the Mclaren is how timeless it looks. The Miura, Countach, Testarossa and Diablo all look very much part of the decade in which they were designed. The Mclaren just appears seperated from fashion and the passing of time.

[sniff diesel]

RobM77 said:

The thing I admire the most about the Mclaren is how timeless it looks. The Miura, Countach, Testarossa and Diablo all look very much part of the decade in which they were designed. The Mclaren just appears seperated from fashion and the passing of time.

Maybe down to the rarity of the F1.

[tomTVR]

Some lazy moderating happening here at least read the thread!

[tomTVR]

tomTVR said:

Some lazy moderating happening here at least read the thread!

Your damn right to have put it back! Quick though.

[Whitney-Paine]

Put in a request for a move.

[flemke]

Whitney-Paine said:

According to the interweb (so it must be right!) the dimensions of the original F1 are:
Length - 4288mm
Width - 1820mm
Height - 1140mm
Wheelbase - 2718mm

Now the Golden Section - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio - as used throughout history to more or less define good aesthetics is a ratio of 1.618 approx.

Now if you divide the McLaren F1's:
Width/Height you get: 1.596
Length/Wheelbase: 1.577

In other words pretty damn close to ideal.

So I am wondering whether the golden ratio came into play when the car was being designed? My family are wondering, why I don't get out more..........

A quick "Google" shows that designers use this ratio a lot, I just wonder if it was used for the F1?

Without asking the designer, I can almost guarantee that the GR had nothing to do with the car's proportions.
The car was intended to be as compact as possible in all dimensions.
The wheelbase was dictated by the length of the engine, and the facts that the fuel tank sits in front of the engine and behind the driver and you need enough space to accomodate a 6'5" driver (such as the designer), and still have the drivers feet behind the front axle line. In order to achieve these things they needed a bespoke gearbox that had the relatively novel feature of being transverse. It was only by making it transverse that they could package everything within a tolerable wheelbase. As it is, the F1's WB (2718) is pretty long for a sports car. The CGT's is similar, but most other "supercars" are 2500-2600. A 911's, IIRC, is about 2355. So the wheelbase was simply as short as they could make it, which wasn't that short.
The benefit of the long wheelbase was that it made the car more stable, which was desirable in a fast car. The drawback was that it slowed down the car's turning.
For the body length, they wanted something that would take up about as much space as a 3-series. Murray is fanatical about not wasting space. Therefore at the front they packed a lot of stuff in front of and above the driver's feet. They then wrapped the body shell around that stuff, as tightly as they could. There is truly no surplus space under there. The front length too was driven purely by necessity.
At the back, you've got the transaxle, then the silencers that sit over and slightly behind it. Then there's the rear fascia, grille, lights, etc. There is a bit of open space in the rear corners, but that is only because there was nothing left to put somewhere. If there had been, they would have tried to put it farther forward, for the sake of weight distribution.
All this was done for the road car, upon which were based the '95 and '96 GTRs. When the rules, and the competition, changed going into '97, they made the three "GT" long-tail road cars, for homolgation, and then about 10 race cars on that homologated basis. They had long tails to increase the rear surface area, for more DF, and to get the rear wing farther back, for more leverage. The longer tail also enabled a much more effective diffuser.
I think the above shows that they did what they did not because of a GR (which, FWIW, I've always thought was as arbitrary as a 'normal distribution').

Similar logic applied to height and width.
The height was dictated by how low they could get it and still fit a tall person inside. They made it as low as they feasibly could do.
The width was dictated by how much width was needed to accomodated the three offset passengers. Again, the aspiration was the width of a 3-series. IINM, the car is slightly wider than that.
If they had wanted to get the GR spot-on for W/H, they easily could have made the body that wee bit wider. The fact that it is not wider should demonstrate that the GR was irrelevant to them.

HTH.

[groomi]

RobM77 said:

The thing I admire the most about the Mclaren is how timeless it looks. The Miura, Countach, Testarossa and Diablo all look very much part of the decade in which they were designed. The Mclaren just appears seperated from fashion and the passing of time.

So typically '90s then - the decade that fashion and time forgot...

[flemke]

groomi said:

So typically '90s then - the decade that fashion and time forgot...

I think, instead, that most of us are just doing our best to forget certain particular icons of the '90s, such as Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Archer and the Spice Girls.

[XJSJohn]

flemke said:

groomi said:

So typically '90s then - the decade that fashion and time forgot...

I think, instead, that most of us are just doing our best to forget certain particular icons of the '90s, such as Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Archer and the Spice Girls.

>shudder< did you HAVE to remind me of ............ spice girls ..... >shudder<