A little
over a year ago I did write about the origin of the ”V-heads”, that is the very
special cylinder heads used on the type 367 Porsche prototype as well as on one
of Peter Max Müllers race cars. Since then I have come in contact with a long
time kdf-collector based in Central Europe who have provided me with very
interesting information.
As it
seems, my expression “V-heads” was not a good one. What I thought was basically
versions of the same head proved to be three very different designs. But my
guess that the design principles of a V-headed VW/kdf-engine stems from the
time of the Berlin-Rome Wagen seems to be correct though.
Reading in
books and articles there are a lot of confusing and sometimes contradictive
information related to this mythic car and the race that never happened. Some
state very detailed information that, upon a closer investigation, turns out to
be totally wrong. However, I will focus
on the engines only and try my best to avoid using unreliable sources.
All
VW/Porsche history writers tends to agree that the engine that in the end made
it to the sleek Berlin-Rome car was a tuned version of the normal kdf engine using dual
carbs. A qualified guess is that the engine needed to be recognized as a
kdf-one for propaganda/marketing purposes. The Berlin-Rome Wagen needed to be
perceived as a sports version of the peoples car rather than an exotica.
A teaser for the next blog post in which the technical specifications of the Type 115 will be revealed.
But, it's doubtful if this whole race car program was started for just one single
race. Most likely they had future events in mind. In parallel with the preparation for the September 1939 Berlin-Rome race
Porsche did develop a far more exotic engine based on the kdf platform. This
project, type 115, will be the topic for my next blog post. Stay tuned.
*Images courtesy of my anonymous Central
European contact
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