Quote:
Originally Posted by larrybuck
That's a beautiful Mercedes, but isn't that the same model caused many fan's death and injury during a European race, that Mercedes pulled all of their cars out of that race, and discontinued that model?
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I posted a reply before but it seems to have gone.
I think you are referring to the 1955 Le Mans accident ? It was caused by a disk braked Jaguar slowing suddenly in front of an Austin Healey which couldn't match the Jaguar's rate of braking so had to pull across the track in the path of the Mercedes of Paul Levegh, who lost control and ended up plowing into the crowd.
I think the main causes were the kink at the start of the pit straight and the lack of a seperate road for the pits at the time - they were open to the track. The Mercedes did have swing axles but it also had an air brake which raised just behind the cockpit - which may also have been a factor.
Mercedes withdrew from racing but continued with the 300 SL/R series and quite a few models after then also had low pivot swing axles - the Pagoda 230/280SL for example.
EDIT - The
Wiki-b**dy-pedia article on the crash has more detail, including the potential blame attached to the Jaguar Driver - unesolved as he died in a crash racing - on the public road.
Anyhoo, back on topic - I was discussing FE with the boss this afternoon and he was describing his attempts to coast behind trucks but they all took steps to remove him from their tails - braking, kicking up dirt from the shoulder etc. We came to the conclusion that they were probably worried about the Crash for Cash scam going on here at the moment. Basically drivers pick on commercial vehicles such as trucks or vans and get them to "cause" accidents. After that suddenly a car with one person in it has 3 or more whiplash injury claims etc.