Moteurs Guy Negre

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Moteurs Guy Nègre (MGN) was a French company that dealt with engine technology. The company first achieved national fame in the late 1980s when it developed and built an unusual W engine for Formula 1 , which was tested in a prototype.

Company history

The founder of the company was the French engineer Guy Nègre, who had learned and worked at Renault in the 1960s . In 1978 he established his own engine workshop in the Provencal town of Vinon-sur-Verdon in the Var department , which was initially called SACMA. The company dealt with the repair of automobile engines. In 1987 the name was changed to MGN (Moteurs Guy Nègre). At that time, Nègre was already working intensively on an engine for Formula 1.

The MGN W-12 engine

Guy Nègre's first sensational design was a twelve-cylinder W engine for Formula 1. The idea for this concept went back to Guy Nègre himself. He carried out the development work on his own account and with his own technical means. It is not clear whether Nègre's goal from the start was to get a Formula 1 engine up and running and to sell it; It is also conceivable that Formula 1 should only represent an opportunity to make the ideas implemented in the engine known to a broad public.

New engine concepts in naturally aspirated Formula 1

With regard to Formula 1, the design of the W-12 engine fell into a phase of upheaval. At the end of the 1980s, due to the regulations, Formula 1 withdrew from the recently very expensive and vulnerable turbo engines; at the beginning of the 1989 Formula 1 season , only naturally aspirated engines were permitted. During this time, various manufacturers developed very different engine concepts for the future naturally aspirated engine formula. In most cases, they were V-engines with eight, ten and twelve cylinders with different cylinder angles. However, there were also more unusual approaches:

  • Finally, two independent W engines were created. One of them was the MGN engine. The second unit was developed by Franco Rocchi in Italy around the same time ; It found its way into Formula 1 through the Italian industrialist Ernesto Vita and his team Life Racing , but neither the team nor the engine were able to convince in the 1990 Formula 1 season: the car powered by the Rocchi engine failed in twelve attempts Qualify once.

The MGN concept

Apart from the basically identical arrangement of the cylinder banks, the MGN-W-12 had nothing in common with the Italian Rocchi engine. Nègre had three cylinder banks with four cylinders each joined together at angles of 60 degrees; the engine had a central crankshaft . At the beginning of 1988, Nègre specified a maximum output of 630 hp at 11,500 revolutions per minute. Insofar as this value corresponded to reality, the MGN-W-12 would have clearly outperformed the customer engines from Cosworth and Judd and was roughly on par with the twelve-cylinder engine from Lamborghini Engineering . The power output of Rocchi's W-12, on the other hand, was effectively at a level of around 400 hp.

At MGN not only the engine layout was independent; In addition, Nègre also implemented unconventional, sometimes daring solutions in numerous detailed questions, with which he stood out from the generally accepted construction patterns. Most noticeable was the lack of conventional valves. Instead, MGN installed chrome-plated rotary valves that promised higher speeds. The talk was of 12,500 revolutions per minute, a value that was remarkable in 1988 and had not been achieved by any engine manufacturer at the time. Even in 1989, the maximum values ​​of the engines from Cosworth and Judd were 11,000 and 11,500 revolutions per minute, respectively. In any case, the top engines from Scuderia Ferrari and from Honda , Lamborghini Engineering and Renault showed in late summer 1989 that the speeds specified by Guy Nègre could also be achieved with conventional valves: they ultimately measured values ​​in the range of 12,800 revolutions. The combustion chamber seal, which was very difficult to get under control, proved to be a significant disadvantage of Nègres rotary valves.

At the end of 1988 Nègre built two, according to other sources, three copies of his W-engine, which differed in some details - for example in the guidance of the toothed belt.

MGN and AGS

In the course of 1989 the French press reported increasingly about Nègres engine. Associated with this were increasing rumors about the use of the engines in the Formula 1 team Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives (AGS). AGS had shown that you could achieve a lot in Formula 1 with the tightest of funds and a lot of enthusiasm. A newspaper in the south of France reported that the French mineral oil company Total wanted to promote the project and finance regular work in the AGS team. The rumors were finally fed by the fact that Guy Nègre announced in the summer of 1989 that he wanted to test his engine in an AGS chassis.

In fact, there is no evidence that serious negotiations took place between AGS founder Henri Julien or the team leader who was newly appointed in 1989 and Guy Nègre. The only business relationship that can be proven is the sale of an old AGS chassis to Guy Nègre, which should have taken place in the summer of 1988. For AGS, however, it was all about additional income in an economically difficult time for the team, not about laying the foundation stone for a joint company.

The test drives

The planned test drives took place in September 1989. Guy Nègre had acquired a vehicle called AGS JH22 (chassis number 033) from AGS, a design that dates back to 1987 but whose roots can be traced back to the early 1980s. Nègre himself (and not AGS) had rebuilt the car so that the MGN engine (instead of the Cosworth DFZ previously used ) fit into the chassis. The measures were provisional and superficial; the engine compartment was obviously badly disguised and visually resembled a Spirit 201C from the Spirit Racing team from 1983.

The test drives took place on the Circuit Automobile du Grand Sambuc, a two kilometer long, undemanding circuit near Aix-en-Provence . MGN did not mention the driver by name; the press release only spoke of a “regional test pilot”. The autohebdo magazine reported in its 602 issue that the test driver's name was Philippe Billot. There are no entries under the name Philippe Billot in the entry lists of smaller racing classes for the 1970s and 1980s.

Nothing was published about the results of the test drives; neither the number of laps nor the lap times were known.

As far as Guy Nègre had hoped that the test drives would arouse the interest of a team in his engine, this could not be realized. Unlike Franco Rocchi's design, the MGN-W12 did not find its way into a Formula 1 team.

The Norma MGN

In 1990 Nègres Motor appeared again, but in connection with endurance racing. A team by the name of Armagnac Bigorre registered a Norma M6 equipped with the MGN engine for category C1 (closed sports car prototypes) for the 1990 Le Mans 24 Hours . The car was made by the French company Norma Auto Concept , a small workshop from the Pyrenees. The French Norbert Santos - the founder of the Norma plant - as well as Noël del Bello and Daniel Boccard were registered as drivers . However, the car did not turn a lap in the race; According to some newspaper reports, the engine would not start, preventing drivers from even getting out of the pits. A remarkable coincidence is the fact that the Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives team competed in Formula 2 under the name “Armagnac Bigorre” in 1983 .

Guy Nègre today

Today Guy Nègre is co-owner of the Luxembourg-registered company MDI (only the holding company, the company is based in Carros, southern France), which aims to develop an air-pressure engine for road vehicles. There is a collaboration with the Indian group Tata . Long-term announcements that the company would effectively manufacture products for sale next year, however, have never been avoided - until today.

literature

  • Adriano Cimarosti: The Century of Racing . 1st edition, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-613-01848-9 .
  • autohebdo : French specialist magazine on motor racing; detailed reports on the MGN Formula 1 engine in issues 596 and 602.
  • Heinz Prüller: Formula for fresh breath. New naturally aspirated engines in Formula 1. In: auto motor und sport, issue 21/1988, p. 298 ff.
  • Mathias Brunner: The woes of young W. The French engine builder Guy Nègre about his revolutionary twelve-cylinder engine . Interview and article in Motorsport aktuell, issue 5/1988, p. 2 f.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Motorsport aktuell, issue 5/1988, p. 2
  2. ^ Information from Guy Nègre in an interview with auto motor und sport, issue 21/1988, p. 303
  3. ↑ auto motor und sport, issue 21/1988, p. 304
  4. ↑ The magazine autohebdo had the headline in issue no. 596 in the early summer of 1989: "Un 12 Cylindres francais pour la F1"