FORUMula1.com

[cityboy]

My twelve year old son has been set a school history project and has chosen to write about his favourite sport, F1. One aspect he's really struggling with is why the Mercedes of yesteryear (and today) are called the Silver Arrows. I assume its to do with being silver (no prizes there) and another aspect of the car design. I'm also quite interested to know myself.

[Selcouth_Feline]

I quite like the story behind the name....
The motor sport governing people decided to bring in weight limits one year of, IIRC, 750kg for cars. Mercedes put their new car on the scales and it tipped the scales at 751kg, 1kg over the allowed limit. After some consideration, they decided to try and get rid of some of the non-essentials - starting with the paint. With the paint stripped back, the car weighed in at precisely 750kg and looked sleek and shiny with it's new aluminium look sans paint....hence the name silver arrows.

HTH,

- SF -

[Marco]

That's a wonderful story. They were the good olde days!

[simac]

Jaguar had a similar problem a few years ago, apparently they changed something in the british racing green paint to make the car lighter !!