Grand Prix Rejects

A while ago I visited the Simsheim Museum (here in Germany) which has lots of nice exhibits, like both a Concorde and a TU-144 - but to the trained eye the racecar department is a bit... suspicious. While there are a couple of nice racecars, some are definitely not the car they claim to be, e.g. they have a car which is said to be Mansells T93 Indycar, but it's in fact a T91 painted in his colours. Some other cars I considered to be not real racing cars but just fakes/lookalikes.

One of those was this "BMS Dallara 192" car, which definitely was never entered by this team.



However today I finally recognized it: It's a 1992 Fondmetal Gr02! I have no Idea why someone would paint a Fondmetal as a Suderia Italia car, as both would be equally obscure to the casual visitor...

Anyway, maybe the other cars I considered fake, because the definitely are not the cars the museum claims they are, are other, reject cars, painted differently, that I did not recognize since the wrong livery deceived my eyes?

This is definitely not a MP4/5, and also not any McLaren F1. In fact it looks so wrong, I can't think of anything what it could be, so maybe really only painted balsawood?



And this is also not a Williams FW14, and it also does not look like any other Williams I've seen including test mules.




And this Benetton... the sidepods look like a Pacific PR01 with modified cowling and fake front wing?




So anyone has an idea? Fake? Test mule? Reject car repainted? Car from a totally different series?

That Williams looks suspiciously like a 1993 Lola to me - if I'm right then it really is a supreme reject in disguise!

I see what you mean, but the sidepods are totally different, IMHO.

I thought the Benetton might just be a 93 Benetton painted as 95 car, since the rear half looks similar, but the front suspension is different...

NOW I notice... the 95 Benetton is actually a 1990 Benetton that has a fake high nose put onto it

The Williams looks like a FW13B with a different air intake slapped on. No idea what the McLaren is, but I'm willing to bet it's something crap from circa 1987/88 with a few bodywork amendments.

Ataxia wrote:The Williams looks like a FW13B with a different air intake slapped on. No idea what the McLaren is, but I'm willing to bet it's something crap from circa 1987/88 with a few bodywork amendments.

Maybe it's just the air intake and engine cover that looks like a Lola then - that's what made me think the whole thing was!

I can't pin it down, but the back end of that 'McLaren' is making me think of a late 80s Brabham for some reason. The nose section looks more like an Indycar!

The Williams looks like a FW13B with a different air intake slapped on.

Ah! Yes and no - I had initially thought FW13B as well, but I dismissed that idea because of the front of the sidepods - but what I forgot was, that they had the FW13 not-B at the end of 89, and that one had exactly those sidepod intakes and slightly different front. So it's a 89 FW13, with a FW14 airbox and front wing endplates. Funny how just a few details can derail ones train of thought...

What I noticed with the 'McLaren' (except for the enormous width of the airbox/engine cowling) is the rear suspension... it either has no halfshafts or no lower suspension arms, and just a single upper suspension arm... and I can't see a gap anywhere, so no way to remove cowling and or sidepod covers... I really think this one is totally bogus.

Elements of that "McLaren" remind me of the Ferrari 637 IndyCar, albeit with an air box above the cockpit.

The poundland McLaren has bits of the EuroBrun ER189 in it as well I've noticed.

I took a look at the Honda RC100 and it's not that one either.

Marco wrote:

The Williams looks like a FW13B with a different air intake slapped on.

Ah! Yes and no - I had initially thought FW13B as well, but I dismissed that idea because of the front of the sidepods - but what I forgot was, that they had the FW13 not-B at the end of 89, and that one had exactly those sidepod intakes and slightly different front. So it's a 89 FW13, with a FW14 airbox and front wing endplates. Funny how just a few details can derail ones train of thought...

What I noticed with the 'McLaren' (except for the enormous width of the airbox/engine cowling) is the rear suspension... it either has no halfshafts or no lower suspension arms, and just a single upper suspension arm... and I can't see a gap anywhere, so no way to remove cowling and or sidepod covers... I really think this one is totally bogus.

I am not sure that is necessarily an FW14 intake either, because in the FW14 I thought that the intake was moulded into the roll hoop crash structure, with a separate engine cover. To be honest, I was wondering if it actually came from a much later car - it looks a bit more reminiscent of the shape of the intakes on the cars from the early 2000s to me.

As for the "McLaren", I'm also trying to work out where air is meant to be venting out of the sidepods too - maybe it is meant to vent via the engine bay, but it looks like the whole of the back end of the car is completely sealed.

I would agree that the most likely answer is that it's a fake car, or at best it's bits of other cars very roughly mashed together and then somebody has covered up the panel gaps to make it look vaguely plausible. I was going to say that the nose cone looks a bit like a Minardi M189, but the front wing elements and endplates don't match the M189. I'm even half wondering if the lower and upper wing elements were even from the same car, because they look a little mismatched in that photo.