{"id":11599,"date":"2015-01-30T16:22:06","date_gmt":"2015-01-31T00:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=11599"},"modified":"2018-05-04T13:15:52","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T20:15:52","slug":"baby-peugeot-tbt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/baby-peugeot-tbt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Baby Peugeot Changed the Heart of Racing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The 1913 Peugeot 3.0-liter Coupe de L’Auto at the Milwaukee Mile.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Until 1912, achieving victory in automobile racing was directly connected to\u00a0building increasingly larger engines: the more cubic inches, the more checkered flags. Then, three racing car drivers\u2014Georges Boillot, Jules Goux and Paolo Zuccarelli\u2014joined forces with brilliant engineer Ernest Henry to change the sport. They convinced Robert Peugeot that some of Henry\u2019s ideas\u2014such as the use of twin camshafts operating four inclined valves per cylinder\u2014could produce more power from a smaller engine.<\/p>\n

\"Heading<\/a>
Heading to the track for a few fun laps.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Peugeot\u2019s technical staff dubbed the four men \u201cLes Charlatans,\u201d but they proved their ideas by setting up a \u201cskunkworks\u201d in Paris, France, far from Peugeot\u2019s factories in the Eastern part of the country. Boillot, Goux, Zuccarelli and Henry proved that good design, rather than gigantic displacement, worked.<\/p>\n

\"Two-man<\/a>
Two-man racing cars were the trend in 1913.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Their testing ground was the 1912 French Grand Prix race. There, the Peugeot racing car with a 7.6-liter engine whooped a 15-liter Fiat. The victory \u00a0marked the birth of the modern racing car engine and the following year saw\u00a03.0- and 5.6-liter engines setting\u00a0pace for voiturette and Grand Prix racing, respectively.
\nEqually memorable for Peugeot was the 1914 Indianapolis 500-Mile Race when Arthur Duray \u00a0entered a 3.0-liter Peugeot, owned by French chocolate maker Jacques Menier, in the Brickyard Classic.<\/p>\n

\"Peugeot<\/a>
Peugeot racing cars came in many sizes and styles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Duray competed against 5.65-liter Peugeot factory entries and 105-hp Delage engines with horizontal valves. Reporters called\u00a0Duray\u2019s tiny car a \u201cBaby Peugeot\u201d, but had to change their tune when it broke the previous Indianapolis Motor Speedway lap record at 99.85 mph and finished in second place. The Delage that took first place had an engine more than twice as big as the 3.0-liter Peugeot engine.<\/p>\n

\"Other<\/a>
Other racecar builders copied the Peugeot engine technology.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amazingly, the Peugeot 3.0-liter engine was just a tad bigger than a Ford Model T motor. \u00a0Within a few years, racing car builders worldwide were introducing engines copied from the basic Puegeot design.
\nThe 1913 Peugeot 3.0-liter Coupe de L’Auto that Duray raced featured a 2980cc (183-cid) four-cylinder in-line engine that made 90 hp at 2900 rpm. It had double overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder. The 1,990-lb. speed demon rode a small 112-inch wheelbase.<\/p>\n

Today the car is part of the Miles Collier Collection at the Revs Institute<\/a>\u00a0in Naples, Fla.<\/p>\n

\"Early<\/a>
Early cameras distorted this image of a Peugeot at speed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Baby Peugeots” were among the first race cars in history that relied on design as opposed to cubic inches to go fast. <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":11606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3447,3713,543],"tags":[1337,687,1894,1895,953,304,1893,542,1994,663],"class_list":["post-11599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classic","category-road-racing","category-sports-car-racing","tag-tbt","tag-classic-cars","tag-french-grand-prix","tag-french-sport-cars","tag-gunners-classic-corner","tag-john-gunnell","tag-peugeot","tag-road-racing","tag-sports-cars","tag-throwback-thursday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/FEAT23.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-315","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11599"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51395,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11599\/revisions\/51395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}