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wonkipop
Samba Member
Joined: January 05, 2021
Posts: 30
Location: Australia
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 Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2023 5:09 pm Post subject: Re: Early 411 front differences |
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@Lars S
you may have seen this -- or not.
this guy in england managed to obtain footage of the EA266 under test.
a believe a lot of the footage was shot in desert testing in south africa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04CZzc-dQBw |
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Lars S
Samba Member
Joined: October 04, 2007
Posts: 786
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2023 8:06 am Post subject: Re: Early 411 front differences |
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| wonkipop wrote: |
@Lars S
you may have seen this -- or not.
this guy in england managed to obtain footage of the EA266 under test.
a believe a lot of the footage was shot in desert testing in south africa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04CZzc-dQBw |
Thanks, yes thats some nice footage!.. and I think the speaker is spot on when it comes to why te EA266 never came into production: it would have become to expensive.
/Lars S
_________________
Porsche 914 -72, Bahia Red daily driver 
VW411 2-d -70, White, sold 
VW412 4-d, -73, Gold Metallic, daily driver
Suzuki T500, -69, Candy Gold, sold
Suzuki K50, -77, Black, daily driver
BMW R69S -69, White, sold
Husqvarna 118cc, -47, Black, Sold |
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Pepperbilly
Samba Member
Joined: April 08, 2017
Posts: 977
Location: Seattle, Wa
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2023 10:44 am Post subject: Re: Early 411 front differences |
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Wonderful footage on that car! Interesting car for sure but not a good idea to replace the beetle with. First of all it would have been way to difficult to maintain. How would you work on that mid engine tucked away like that? Secondly, probably would have been noisy and too warm for the occupants while driving. I see nothing but problems here. By the way, you gotta love that dipstick!
Bill |
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Lars S
Samba Member
Joined: October 04, 2007
Posts: 786
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2023 10:02 pm Post subject: Re: Early 411 front differences |
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| Pepperbilly wrote: |
Wonderful footage on that car! Interesting car for sure but not a good idea to replace the beetle with. First of all it would have been way to difficult to maintain. How would you work on that mid engine tucked away like that? Secondly, probably would have been noisy and too warm for the occupants while driving. I see nothing but problems here. By the way, you gotta love that dipstick!
Bill |
Yes, by the size of the dip stick you can tell that something is wrong with this design! 
Just speculating here:
Maybe the EA266 could have done better as an all Porsche branded car, their attempt to get into a wider market...top quality and heavily priced rather then big volumes ...aiming att a small number of ("excentric") people  ?
(The Smart/Swatch car comes to my mind as a parallell idea)
/Lars S
_________________
Porsche 914 -72, Bahia Red daily driver
VW411 2-d -70, White, sold
VW412 4-d, -73, Gold Metallic, daily driver
Suzuki T500, -69, Candy Gold, sold
Suzuki K50, -77, Black, daily driver
BMW R69S -69, White, sold
Husqvarna 118cc, -47, Black, Sold |
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wonkipop
Samba Member
Joined: January 05, 2021
Posts: 30
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2023 12:53 am Post subject: Re: Early 411 front differences |
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| Lars S wrote: |
| Pepperbilly wrote: |
Wonderful footage on that car! Interesting car for sure but not a good idea to replace the beetle with. First of all it would have been way to difficult to maintain. How would you work on that mid engine tucked away like that? Secondly, probably would have been noisy and too warm for the occupants while driving. I see nothing but problems here. By the way, you gotta love that dipstick!
Bill |
Yes, by the size of the dip stick you can tell that something is wrong with this design!
Just speculating here:
Maybe the EA266 could have done better as an all Porsche branded car, their attempt to get into a wider market...top quality and heavily priced rather then big volumes ...aiming att a small number of ("excentric") people ?
(The Smart/Swatch car comes to my mind as a parallell idea)
/Lars S |
i think all you can say is it was a fabulous failure.
that launched a thousand careers.
its the phoenix thing.
where it gets burned to the ground and reborn.
greek mythology etc.
all the ideas in it (except the ludicrous engine placement for an everyman car) re- emerge. the GTI is there before the GTI etc.
and genius re-emerges having been burned down - one f, piech to be precise.
he just did so many ur- cars.
917
audi quattro.
2 is enough but there were more.
and some more mad failures along the way he ducked away from responsibility for. 
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it caused the whole thing to explode and we got the VW golf.
genius car. next move on from the morris mini. good stuff.
but nevertheless the very strange front suspension of the 311 remains a mystery? |
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GArBa
Samba Member
Joined: January 27, 2014
Posts: 2105
Location: Milano, Italy
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| Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2023 5:23 am Post subject: Re: Early 411 front differences |
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there was nothing genius mechanically in the Golf. Giorgetto Giugiaro himself stated that VW Got the golf's mechanical layout from the fiat 128 designed by Dante Giacosa (who had pioneered the FWD layout with transversal engine and end-on gearbox in his previous design of the Primula, designed for Fiat's subsidiary Autobianchi). The Golf was, however, a better appealing package overall than the 128, which had a much more conservative styling. In fact, after seeing the success of the Golf, Fiat over-reacted styling-wise and the world got the bizarre-looking Ritmo.
_________________
cars:
'97 type 1 1600i
'14 type AA Seat Mii (sadly dead after 270.000 km)
'22 type C1 T-Cross
'23 type AC3 Hyundai I10 (VW no longer makes small cars!)
-------------------------
moped:
'82 Benelli Magnum 3v |
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wonkipop
Samba Member
Joined: January 05, 2021
Posts: 30
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2023 3:56 am Post subject: Re: Early 411 front differences |
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| GArBa wrote: |
| there was nothing genius mechanically in the Golf. Giorgetto Giugiaro himself stated that VW Got the golf's mechanical layout from the fiat 128 designed by Dante Giacosa (who had pioneered the FWD layout with transversal engine and end-on gearbox in his previous design of the Primula, designed for Fiat's subsidiary Autobianchi). The Golf was, however, a better appealing package overall than the 128, which had a much more conservative styling. In fact, after seeing the success of the Golf, Fiat over-reacted styling-wise and the world got the bizarre-looking Ritmo. |
fiat 128 = copy of bmc mini?
alec issigonis is the origin of the idea, and he half robbed it of andre citroen?,
but the engineers at fiat, give me a break!
giugaro was a great stylist, one of the best, but his assesment of technogical history was nothing more than a flick of the hand and a sweep of the forearm in typical italian style, there is nothing to the italians technogically in terms of the everyman car, its all down to the germans and the brits.
the genius of the golf is the germans combined all the thinking of the 60s into a single object for the 70s. front wheel drive transverse engine hatchback,
key words hatchback, and then there was more.
of course the 411/412 is the last moment of resistance to that as a production car and the EA266 is the last fully insane resistance to it.
and i suppose in the end that is what is truly interesting about the 411/412.
its a full stop at the end of a sentence about an idea. its all over after the that car. which is why you would want one and maintain one? at least from my point of view. i love things which are over --- or ended!
..........
but issoginis was right on the money, and VW had the sense to understand that |
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GArBa
Samba Member
Joined: January 27, 2014
Posts: 2105
Location: Milano, Italy
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| Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2023 5:11 am Post subject: Re: Early 411 front differences |
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| wonkipop wrote: |
fiat 128 = copy of bmc mini?
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Not really. You can say the Miura is a copy of the Mini, however, as Issigonis had to place the gearbox under the engine sharing the same sump (and oil) in a less than ideal configuration, and Stanzani & Dallara had to do the same for the Lambo Miura.
Citroen TAs (and other early large FWDs) had a longitudinal engine with the gearbox in front of the engine, while the small DKW Fronts up to the F8 had the transverse engine and a separated gearbox, but put one in front of the other with a link chain.
In the 128 Fiat's long time designer Dante Giacosa (who in turn had studied the VW flat four to design the 500' inline twin and the steyr-puch flat 2) introduced many mechanical innovation to the (western) mass market, including a transverse engine with end-on gearbox (which he had tried on the Autobianchi Primula), and a fully independent transverse leaf spring rear suspension (which the Golf did not have for cost reasons as VW was stripped for cash, same reason they ditched the squared off headlamps proposed by Giugiaro in favor of round units).
I said western market because the first transverse-engined car with an end-on gearbox that may have inspired Giacosa, but also Issigonis as it came out 2 years before the mini, could have been only the Trabant P50, which had a very similar mechanical package with a Framo-derived air-cooled two stroke engine.
Giacosa envisioned the 128 to have a 3 or 5 door modern styling as the Golf later did, but Fiat management preferred a blunt look to appeal to more traditionalist customers coming from the outgoing Fiat 1100 R.
_________________
cars:
'97 type 1 1600i
'14 type AA Seat Mii (sadly dead after 270.000 km)
'22 type C1 T-Cross
'23 type AC3 Hyundai I10 (VW no longer makes small cars!)
-------------------------
moped:
'82 Benelli Magnum 3v |
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