MovieChat Forums > The Big Wheel (1949) Discussion > Rear-engine racecar

Rear-engine racecar

posted 16 years ago by amesk
6 replies | jump to latest

In the first few scenes at Indianapolis, is there a rear-engine car doing a practice lap? Only caught a quick look.

tnx

[–] oldrustycars 15 years ago

Sure looked like it to me. Also, the car owner asked Mickey Rooney if he experience driving a front wheel driver car....sounds made up to me.

[–] cr-1761 15 years ago

You misheard . . . it was a "front-wheel drive" car . . . i.e. the power from the engine went to the ground through the front wheels as opposed to the rear wheels. And, yes, there were some front-wheel drive race cars back then.

[–] defiant-10 14 years ago

The front-wheel drive car appeared to be a Miller, one of the more successful dirt-track racers of the time. I don't know how well they did at Indianapolis.

What I had in mind was boxing the compass.

[–] Lemnpiper 15 years ago

In 1949 there in fact was a car entered called the "rounds rocket " which was a rear engined racecar. It failed to qualify that year and was never able to make the field in the future. So i suppose to the films producers it was such a unique racecar and since they had footage of it in practice it would make for a bonus to include it in the film . I dont think there is much other footage of that car that does survive so it is a lucky break for all race fans to have this opportunity so actually see it in motion.

[–] shootr2 14 years ago

You have a good eye....that was a practice lap of car 51, the Kurtis-Offenhauser "Rounds Rocket Special" being driven by Bill Taylor. It failed to qualify.

The design of the car was VERY similar to that of the Awtowelo 650 "Sokol", which itself was designed from plans "acquired" from Auto Union (basically today's Audi), which became "Awtowelo" when the Russians took control of the AU factories after the fall of Germany in WWII.

[–] stick500 12 years ago

that car was preceded by a rear-engined Miller that qualified in '39 and there was another one around that time IIRC called the Floegel (sp?) Special that had two engines, one in front of the driver and the other in the rear.
In '49 when this movie was made there was a big battle between front wheel drive cars (The Blue Crown Specials and the Novis that only ran the 500) and the more conventional rear-wheel drive cars that also ran on dirt.