Picking up the prototype for the model with open wheels (the trace of A class), we did not immediately notice the car “Lotus” with a modest architecture of the body and a relaxed silhouette — machine like a machine. But one of the guys asked “innocent” question — why would he ship the pipe? After looking at the car more closely, we realized that the prototype carries many more mysteries: where is this race car exhaust pipe, where futerko, inlet air into the cylinders of the engine, why so few intakes, why is the car the same front and rear wheels, etc.? They began to understand, and found that perceived at first as “the ugly duckling” “the Lotus-56V” can rightfully be considered a “Swan” of motor vehicles.
If the ships gave him such an architectural element, like a trumpet, lords of the ocean air — aircraft — has shared with him his engine. Powerful gas turbine — that determined the peculiar shape of “Lotus”. Attempts to put turbine engines on sports-racing cars are being made quite often. So it makes sense to focus on those benefits that we are trying to extract the designers of this type of engine.
The hero of the novel of Remarque “Life on loan”, a professional race car driver, said in tons of wins, who is better able to shift gears. Indeed, the acceleration and braking of the machine with the internal combustion engine, the gradients and cornering require frequent transition from low transmission to high and Vice versa. The fact that piston engines are not very favorable torque characteristics, the torque and the power value of the engine grows with increasing rpm, and power falls sharply with the decrease in the number of revolutions of the engine. So you have to “fit” the car to the driving conditions through the transmission.
Probably many of you noticed that on the steep and not too protracted recovery (e.g., at the entrance of the bridge) trolley always easily surpasses the bus. It is the result of the fact that the fall in the number of revolutions of the motor, the capacity is reduced slightly, and the torque transmitted to the wheels of the trolley, on the contrary, grows. The nature of the flow and torque characteristics of the gas turbine and electric motor — siblings. As the driver of the tram or trolleybus and racer “Lotus-56V” the gas pedal (in the electric vehicle is a rheostat foot pedal) set the speed, and the engine adjusts itself to the profile of the road.