“Happy it was banned”
One of Gordon Murray’s most controversial designs was the 1978 Brabham BT46B which featured a variable ride height and a large propeller at the rear (picture above), which he claimed, was for cooling the engine, but which coincidentally acted as a fan to suck the car down onto the asphalt.
Though the idea was not specifically illegal at the time, it was made clear to Murray, after the car won at Anderstorp in Sweden, that the fan could be deemed as a moveable aerodynamic device, and that it would be banned. The win stood, but Bernie Ecclestone (Brabham owner at the time), decided not to field the car again.
Niki Lauda, winner of the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix in the Brabham BT46B, remembered: “When I first saw the fan car I was shocked, you know? When I first drove it, the thing understeered like crazy and the cornering speeds were so high; it was so quick. I was happy it was banned. If we’d all had fan cars, we would have ended up killing each other.”
Niki explained: “If you went off the road in that car, you’d damage that propeller in the fan, then you didn’t know next lap if you would fly or if you would be sucked onto the ground. F**k, that was bad. We won with the fan car in Sweden (picture below), there was big potential, but after that, it was banned, and it’s better this way.”