I believe this was the last time the car was run because Sydney had got his sights set on building a twin engined Steyr ‘Sprint Car’, more on the lines of the early American dragsters. The front cover of an American dragster magazine showing a four-engined car run by Micky Thompson had got his thoughts towards an outright sprint machine.
An outright sprint machine built on American lines did at the time present major problems due to the basic requirements of The RAC rulebook. The two major areas were related to the solid located rear axle and no front brakes. It was argued that there were a few vintage racers running with only rear brakes. However, as I remember The RAC were adamant that front brakes had to be used. The solid rear axle was an arguable point because it avoided the need to build a relatively complex rear suspension system. A solid rear axle was to be used. A set of 8.00 x16 inch M&H slicks were obtained from the USA. There was no time to try them on the Steyr ‘Sports Car’ as the twin engined Steyr ‘Sprint Car’ was top priority. In the workshop below Clapham High Street the major components were laid out.
I was left with the “simple” task of designing the multi-chain drive to couple the output of each gearbox to the central prop shaft which had a Rover freewheel diff built into it. The object was that once the rear wheels started to break loose the free wheel unit locked and then the drive was taken on all four wheels. To satisfy the RAC the front brakes were taken through one single disc, running at prop shaft speed, mounted on the nose of the front differential unit. This satisfied the regulations.
The main braking effort was taken by 12″ diameter by 1.75″ inboard brakes. In order to get both engines C of G down, they were fitted with dry sumps. The existing Steyr oil pumps were modified so they had two stages. One to provide oil through the normal oil galleries, the other to scavenge oil from the greatly reduced sump and return it to a separate oil tank. Of all the specialised items designed for this car the dry sump worked extremely well.