{"id":30438,"date":"2024-07-08T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2024-07-08T07:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.carandclassic.com\/magazine\/?p=30438"},"modified":"2024-07-08T15:40:49","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T14:40:49","slug":"six-appeal-the-tyrrell-p34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carandclassic.com\/magazine\/six-appeal-the-tyrrell-p34\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Appeal \u2013 The Tyrrell P34"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every so often a car comes along that completely changes the game. A car that takes the rule book and unceremoniously chucks it out of the window into oncoming traffic for it to be dashed against the slew of uniformity heading in the opposite direction and mangled under the wheels of accepted norms. Cars like the utterly bonkers six-wheeled Tyrrell P34 for instance. And because this is Car & Classic, we have one for sale<\/a>, naturally.<\/p>\n

Aside from Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward’s ‘Fab 1’ Rolls-Royce there haven’t been many six-wheeled cars, and even then the pink Thunderbirds whip was entirely fictitious. Yes there have been a few sixers pop up over the years but none have made as much of an impact, created such a furore or been as successful as the Tyrrell P34.<\/p>\n

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Here was a car designed and built from the ground up and conceived with extra wheels in mind from the very beginning. Wheels five and six weren’t simply bolted on as an afterthought or as a modification, far from it. The Tyrell P34 was very much intended to be this radical from the get go, but it wasn’t merely a concept car, publicity stunt or an engineering show piece. Oh no. The Tyrell P34 not only competed in motorsport, but it competed at the highest level. Yep, Formula 1, and it only went and bloody won too!<\/p>\n

Looking like something out of a fantasy Top Trumps deck the P34 was designed by Tyrrell’s chief designer Derek Gardner in the mid ’70s. Gardner had joined the F1 constructor in 1970 at the behest of founder Ken Tyrrell and quickly proved himself by designing its very first chassis \u2013 the Tyrrell 001, in his garage of all places. Fast forward a few years, and after designing the next six cars for Ken and the team, Gardner (after initially conceiving the idea as far back as ’68) would put pen to paper to produce what would become arguably the most iconic F1 car of all time. Period.<\/p>\n

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The idea behind the concept was to improve the drag co-efficient of Tyrrell’s latest batch of F1 cars by bringing the front wheels inside of the front wing, thereby reducing drag and providing a cleaner flow of air over and around the car, technically making it faster. The problem Gardner faced was the fact that to achieve this much more compact setup the front wheels would need to be tiny. 10 inches in diameter to be exact.<\/p>\n

It was certainly possible to fit such small wheels to the chassis but the smaller the wheel, the smaller the tyre’s contact patch with the track, and in Formula One grip is life. So how do you double the contact patch without increasing the size of the wheels? You add two more of course. Simple really when you think about it. The only way Gardner could solve this problem and still retain his original idea of smaller front wheels was to double up, and lo and behold, the Tyrrell P34 was born.<\/p>\n

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The design, alongside the aerodynamic improvements, also led to increased braking performance due to there being an increased overall braking area but it wasn’t without its problems. The suspension system was naturally more complex, as was the steering setup, but the big brains at Tyrrell solved this by only connecting the front pair of wheels to the steering with the second pair then attached to the first via a trick crank.<\/p>\n