Wires (yet another footnote)

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Will Owen mentioned that "Speaking of Alfas on wires, those of you who got the
Superflow article might notice that it was running on those pretty Borranis,
too." Indeed, the Superflow was a showpiece on a 6C 3000 CM chassis, the
immediate successor to the 1900 C 52-2000 Disco Volante (and to all prior Alfa
performance-oriented chassis after 1921, which alll had wires). A significant
transitional car was the 2000 Sportiva of 1954-55; The Sportiva Spiders and
one (probably the first) Sportiva coupe had wires while the other (presumably
last) Sportiva coupe had disk wheels with twenty or so round holes (similar to
the 105, 115, and early 116 disc wheels but I believe with splined hubs and
center knock-off nuts.) The splined hubs, center knock-off disc wheel was
coming into prominent use around that time on Jaguars, Mercedes, and other
high-performance cars, and had been prominently used on the BMWs which mopped
up the last prewar "Mille Miglia", sometimes disparagingly called "the Brescia
Grand Prix" because of its being several laps around a shorter course rather
than the single long course of the classic Mille Miglia.

While granting that the French, and especially M. Bugatti always went their
own way without necessarily flawless logic, Bugatti seemed to implicitly
differ with Jim Steck's statement that "The strength of a wire wheel is not
inherently inferior to a cast wheel.  The main "fault" of a wire wheel is it's
cost". On the Type 35 Bugatti the do-it-right, cost-be-damned version had cast
alloy wheels and the later entry-level cheap/inferior alternate version had
wires as part of its generally lowered specifications. Bugatti can't be
entirely dismissed as Gallic aberration, since he was Milanese by birth,
education, and professional beginnings as an automobile engineer. I don't
think he ever bothered with the Mille Miglia - at least not as a factory team
- but the record of his alloy-wheeled cars in the Targa Florio, arguably the
toughest of the Le Mans/Mille Miglia/Targa Florio trilogy, speaks well for his
cars and his wheels.

John H.
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