Jump to content

Dodge Tomahawk

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 136.158.59.173 (talk) at 10:40, 18 April 2021 (It's okay, I support your previous edit.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Not to be confused with SRT Tomahawk.

Dodge Tomahawk
ManufacturerDodge
Parent companyDaimlerChrysler AG
Production9 units total, 2003–2006[1][2]
ClassConcept vehicle
Engine8.3 L (506.5 cu in) 20-valve 90° V-10[3]
Power500 hp (370 kW) @ 5600 rpm (claimed)[3] (45 kW:L power:displacement ratio)
Torque525 lb⋅ft (712 N⋅m)[3]
Transmission2-speed manual[3]
SuspensionFront: Horizontal double fork[3]
BrakesFront: 2×16 piston discs, Rear: 8 piston disc[3]
TiresFront (2): 20"×4", Rear (2): 20"×5"
Wheelbase76 in (1,900 mm)[3]
DimensionsL: 102 in (2,600 mm)[3]
W: 27.7 in (700 mm)
H: 36.9 in (940 mm)
Seat height29 in (740 mm)
Weight1,500 lb (680 kg) (claimed)[3] (wet)
Fuel capacity3.35 US gal (12.7 L; 2.79 imp gal)

The Dodge Tomahawk is a non–street legal concept vehicle introduced by Dodge at the 2003 North American International Auto Show that was subsequently produced and sold in very small numbers. The Tomahawk attracted significant press and industry attention for its striking design, its outsize-displacement, 10-cylinder car engine, and its four close-coupled wheels, which give it a motorcycle-like appearance. Experts disagreed on whether it is a true motorcycle.[4] The Retro-Art Deco design's central visual element is the 500-horsepower (370 kW), 8.3-litre (510 cu in) V10 SRT10 engine from the Dodge Viper sports car.[5] The Tomahawk's two front and two rear wheels are sprung independently, which would allow it to lean into corners and countersteer like a motorcycle.[3]

Dodge press releases and spokespeople gave various hypothetical top speeds ranging from 300 mph (480 km/h) to as high as 420 mph (680 km/h), which analysts thought were probably calculated with horsepower and final drive ratio alone, without accounting for drag, rolling resistance, and stability. These estimates, and the more conservative 250 mph (400 km/h) a designer suggested could be possible, were debunked as implausible, or physically impossible, by the motorcycling and automotive media. No independent road tests of the Tomahawk have ever been published, and the company said that in internal testing it was never ridden above 100 mph (160 km/h).[3][4][6] Hand-built replicas of the Tomahawk were offered for sale through the Neiman Marcus catalog at a price of US$555,000, and up to nine might have sold.[1][2] As they were not street legal, Dodge called the Tomahawk a "rolling sculpture", not intended to be ridden.[1][3]

Industry experts said the Tomahawk was a resounding success at one-upping rivals and taking the trade show spotlight, and was a branding and marketing coup, generating media buzz and sending the message that Chrysler was a bold, ambitious company, unafraid to take risks.[7][8]

Inception

Chrysler Group CEO, Dieter Zetsche (top) and COO, Wolfgang Bernhard

The idea for a Viper-engined motorcycle started with two lower-level Chrysler Group employees, Bob Schroeder, a design office modeler and motorcycle rider, and Dave Chyz, vehicle build specialist and drag racer.[5][9] According to designer Mark Walters, the question asked was, "What if we had a Viper engine and a Champion chassis? Something like a Boss Hoss", resulting in an engine displacement five times a typical Harley-Davidson.[5][9] The low-volume Boss Hoss motorcycle is built around a 5.7 L (350 cu in) Chevrolet V8, and the largest-displacement mass-produced motorcycle is the 2.3 L (140 cu in) Triumph Rocket III, neither anywhere close to the 8.3-litre (510 cu in) Viper engine.[10][11] The only motorcycle with a displacement in the Tomahawk's league uses the same V-10 car engine, the one-off 2009 Millyard Viper V10, a bike created to rival the Tomahawk after Allen Millyard was underwhelmed by a Tomahawk speed run at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK.[12][13]

Schroeder and Chyz took the proposal to Senior Vice President of Design Trevor Creed, who initially said, "we don't build bikes" but still allowed some design sketches to be created, which were "mind blowing" enough to bring Creed on board.[9] They eventually took the idea to Freeman Thomas, DaimlerChrysler VP of advanced design, who assigned Mark Walters to join the effort.[5] Thomas suggested using two front and rear wheels because a single wheel would look thin next to the unusually wide engine, inspired by the four-wheeled light cycles in the film Tron.[5][9] Walters anticipated howls from bikers that this would make it not a motorcycle, but he felt uniqueness was more important, and imagined the appearance with only a single wheel in front of and behind the engine would have been visually unbalanced, saying he would like to see it made that way for comparison.[9] By the spring of 2002, Walters had prepared a full scale design presentation, with sketches along a 20 ft (6.1 m) wall and a borrowed Viper engine resting on an engine stand with two wheels placed fore and aft as a visual aid. This was presented to Chrysler Group COO, Wolfgang Bernhard, and CEO, Dieter Zetsche, who gave their immediate approval.[5][9]

Dodge Viper RT/10 racing at Le Mans 1994
8.3-litre (510 cu in) V10 SRT10 engine

Design

1986 Elf 3 Honda with hub-center steering, in the Honda Collection Hall

The design was the work of Chrysler staff designer Mark Walters, who built the vehicle around the Dodge Viper 8.3-litre (510 cu in) V-10 engine.[5] Once approved by Bernhard and Zetsche to build not just a full-scale mockup, but a running, workable concept vehicle, the design and fabrication process took six months.[9] The engineering, as well as the fabrication, was outsourced to RM Motorsports, a Wixom, Michigan specialty shop that fabricates one-of-a-kind parts for rare and vintage race cars.[4][9] Walters said Kirt Bennett at RM handled the task of making Walters' sketches a physical reality that was mechanically sound.[9] Walters' early sketches had a front suspension that looked something like an Elf-Honda racing motorcycle's hub-center steering, from which RM designed a new, patented front- and rear-swingarm suspension that allows both parallel wheels to lean together, keeping all four in contact with the ground and allowing countersteering.[9] The Tomahawk was intended, unlike many concept vehicles, to be a "functional runner" that "had to work" as well as have a finished appearance, since the mechanical parts would be exposed to view.[9]

The V-10 engine needed several design changes. To position the engine lower to the ground, the lubrication system was changed from wet sump to a dry sump type, moving the under-engine oil sump to a tank located in front of and to the left of the engine.[9] The car-style single radiator out in front of the engine was changed to two smaller radiators and fitted into the V-shaped space above the engine, where cooling air is force-fed using a belt-driven fan sourced from a Porsche 911.[9]

Suspension

The Tomahawk has an independent suspension on all four wheels designed to allow the rider to countersteer and lean into turns like a tilting three-wheeler.[3] There is a hub-center steering style swingarm connected to the outboard side of each of the two front wheels, with a steering link connected to the handlebar shaft.[9] There is very little lock-to-lock steering range, only about 20° on either side of center, so the turning radius of the Tomahawk is large; "only a little tighter than an SR-71", said Motorcyclist's Jeff Karr.[9] A low center of gravity, accomplished by situating the engine as low to ground as possible, is intended to provide greater control at low speeds, and a low saddle allows riders to place both feet on the ground when stopped, for greater stability.[5] The two rear wheels also each have an independent swingarm, but on the inboard side, along with an inboard chain drive for each wheel.[9] The rider can engage a rear suspension lock, which hydraulically holds the two wheels' relative positions, letting the vehicle stand on its own, without using a side stand.[3][9]

According to computer imaging, the suspension would allow a lean of up to 45° with all four wheels maintaining contact with the ground before one of the swingarms contacted the ground, although attempting to actually corner at such extreme angles is not safe given the Tomahawk's 1,500 lb (680 kg) weight.[9] Test rides for the purpose of photographing the Tomahawk in action revealed that there were still stability issues to be worked out, given that it rides, "like two motorcycles riding in ultraclose formation, coupled with the weight of three and the horsepower of four," in Karr's words, meaning that, "some disagreement is inevitable."[9] RM Motorsports's Bud Bennett said the 45° lean system worked well and was in fact stable, quashing rumors that any test riders had been thrown from the Tomahawk, and that the only issue was the original design's limited 18° handlebar turning radius, making sharp turns impossible.[13] In 2003 RM Motorsports had been working on designs for versions with wider handlebars allowing more control, and two or three wheels instead of four, making a street-legal Tomahawk conceivable.[13] Bud Bennett said that at RM they thought the narrower, limited-range handlebars and unnecessary two front wheels instead of one would not function well, but at the time the design was "just a concept" with no anticipated customer demand, and as a concept vehicle, the Tomahawk did "everything it was supposed to do, which is to push the Dodge name and to celebrate the Viper engine."[13]

Fabrication

Bennett's team at RM custom-milled the Tomahawk components from blocks of aluminum.[3] Under the seat are two alloy pieces that began as 750 lb (340 kg) billets that are machined down to 25 lb (11 kg) each, and polished to a mirror finish.[9] Details like hand levers and the twistgrip use needle and ball bearings.[9]

Detroit Auto Show debut

The Tomahawk debuted at what Automobile Magazine called the high point of a period of increasing extravagance at the Cobo Hall Detroit Auto Show (officially the North American International Auto Show) that began with the expansion of the show in 1986–1987, leading to the splashy debuts of ever larger and more powerful cars and trucks, such as the Hummer H2 in 2000 and the Ford GT40 in 2002.[14] Newsweek described the period as a "horsepower arms race".[15]

The 2003 show had the largest ever attendance, 810,699, and the limits of concept excess were pushed further with the 7.0L V-10 Ford 427 Concept, which had a V-8 hastily expanded to 10 cylinders in response to rumors that Cadillac was going to show a V-10, only to be outdone when the rumored V-10 turned out to be the Cadillac Sixteen, with a claimed 1,000 hp (750 kW) V16 that could shut down 8 or 12 cylinders at a time to save fuel.[16] Yet even these monsters would be upstaged by an even more unexpected debut, Dodge's V-10 motorcycle, unveiled the day after the Sixteen.[16] In response, GM executive Bob Lutz, who himself had helped conceive the Viper in 1988 when he was at Chrysler, was asked where his 1,000 hp V-16 motorcycle was, and he answered, in the wry spirit of the question, that he had none, pounding the table and saying, "Rats, outmaneuvered by Chrysler again!"[16][17]

AutoWeek named the Ford 427 "Best Concept" and the Cadillac V-16 "Best in Show" for 2003, and the editors said they wished they had an award for "Best Automotive Sculpture" to give to the unexpected motorcycle they found so likable.[18] The jury of 35 journalists of the North American Concept Vehicle of the Year chose the General Motors Hy-wire over the Tomahawk for the 2003 Specialty Concept Vehicle of the Year award.[19] The Tomahawk was remembered in 2014 by Automotive News as one of the "10 Most Memorable World Debuts".[20][21] In the years after the Tomahawk made its high-profile entrance, the Detroit Auto Show became more modest in scale, and the automakers' battle to outdo each other with boundary-breaking dream cars faded in the years leading up to the 2008 auto industry crisis, and the more cautious recovery that followed.[14]

Ford 427 Concept, AutoWeek's "Best Concept"
Engine display of Cadillac Sixteen, AutoWeek's "Best in Show"
General Motors Hy-wire, 2003 "North American Concept Vehicle of the Year"

Performance claims

Stainless steel rear cowl and top of Tomahawk, with handlebars connected to a vertical stalk. At the Walter P. Chrysler Museum, Michigan.

As introduced in 2003, the one-of-a-kind Tomahawk was operational and road-ready, but not fully road-tested, and acceleration and top speed were not confirmed; Dodge described the vehicle both as "automotive sculpture," intended for display only, while also saying it was "rideable".[1][22] DaimlyerChrysler spokespeople declined Popular Science's requests to test the Tomahawk's performance, or to speak to the company's test riders, or to share those riders' riding impressions.[3]

Critical reception

Most motorcycling, automotive, and science press greeted the Tomahawk with jokes and sarcasm roasting the Tomahawk, such as AutoWeek suggesting anyone riding the Tomahawk was a Darwin Award contender,[23] and a 2015 book calling it "the strangest" of the 2003 Dodge vehicles and "one of Chrysler's nuttiest concepts".[24] Freelance motorcycle designer and Motorcycle Consumer News columnist Glynn Kerr, however, wrote an analysis that took it seriously and critiqued it as he would a "real" motorcycle.[7] Kerr described the top speed claims from Dodge as the work of "spin doctors", but said that the "less than convincing" "high-speed antics", combined with the failure to provide an obvious necessity of a fairing for a true high-speed motorcycle, or a fuel tank large enough to provide greater than 50 mi (80 km) range, were consistent with several indicators in the design of carelessness and laziness. Kerr called to task the car designers for a lack of curiosity about the basic tenets of motorcycle design, saying they were "underwhelmed" by the challenge.[7] He said the Tomahawk "illustrates how the automotive industry considers motorcycles a lesser form of its own discipline" and so "feel entirely qualified to redesign one whenever they run out of ideas for sports cars."[7]

See also

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dodge Tomahawk.
  1. ^ a b c d Lienert, Dan (October 14, 2003), "Vehicle of the Week; Dodge's New Axe", Forbes
  2. ^ a b Chronicle Staff Report (November 18, 2006), "San Francisco Auto Show -- a bit more than the usual fare", San Francisco Chronicle
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p "Dodge's 4-Wheel Tomahawk", Popular Science, vol. 262, no. 4, Bonnier Corporation, April 2003, ISSN 0161-7370
  4. ^ a b c Phillips, John (April 2003), "Dodge Tomahawk; Ten cylinders, 500 horses, four wheels. Think of it as a Viper that got caught in a trash compactor", Cycle World, pp. 70–74
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h "Chrysler's cruise missile", Design News, October 20, 2003, retrieved April 24, 2020
  6. ^ Mateja, Jim; Popely, Rick (January 7, 2003), "Dodge Tomahawk a cruise missile; 4-wheel cycle uses Viper engine", Chicago Tribune, retrieved December 10, 2011
  7. ^ a b c d Kerr, Glynn (June 2004), "Motorcycle Design—The Detroit Spinners", Motorcycle Consumer News, vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 36–37
  8. ^ Wilkinson, Stephan (2005), Man and Machine: The Best of Stephan Wilkinson, Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 84–85, ISBN 9781599216799
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Karr, Jeff (April 2003), "Traumahawk: with its Tomahawk concept bike, Dodge jumps into the motorcycle business (maybe) with four wheels, 500 horsepower and 1500 pounds. Get your affairs in order", Motorcyclist, pp. 34–
  10. ^ Leno, Jay (November 2005), "Nothing Subtle", Popular Mechanics, pp. 55–58
  11. ^ Miles, Matthew (January 2003), "Rocket III; Behind the scenes with Triumph's new three-cylinder Mega-Cruiser", Cycle World, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 69–73, ISSN 0011-4286
  12. ^ Robbins, Alex (February 10, 2016). "Video: The 207mph V10-powered bike that's about to deafen London". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  13. ^ a b c d English, Andrew (July 26, 2003), "Tomahawk makes its debut on all fours", The Daily Telegraph
  14. ^ a b "The rise and fall of the Detroit auto show", Automobile Magazine, pp. 12+, April 2011
  15. ^ Naughton, Keith (February 24, 2003), "My Engine Is Bigger Than Your Engine: Carmakers Are Locked in a Horsepower Arms Race", Newsweek, Harmon Newsweek LLC  – via Questia (subscription required) , p. 60
  16. ^ a b c Mateja, Jim (January 13, 2003), "SSR sticker proves to be shocking", Chicago Tribune
  17. ^ the Auto Editors of Consumer Guide, "History of the Dodge Viper", Howstuffworks Auto {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  18. ^ "Rumble in Detroit: Part 2 of 2", AutoWeek, p. 22, January 20, 2003
  19. ^ "2003 North American Concept Vehicle Of The Year Award Winners Announced", Advanced Materials & Composites News,  – via HighBeam (subscription required) , March 17, 2003, archived from the original on May 4, 2016
  20. ^ Nauman, Matt (February 2003), Concept cars: Models that may become reality, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
  21. ^ "The 10 most memorable world debuts", Automotive News, p. 28, January 6, 2014
  22. ^ 2003 Dodge Tomahawk Concept Vehicle [press release], Auburn Hills, Michigan: FCA US LLC, January 6, 2003
  23. ^ "But Wait, There's More...", AutoWeek,  – via General OneFile (subscription required) , p. 48, January 20, 2003, What do you call a guy on a 500-hp, Viper-engined motorcycle?
    1. Incredibly stupid
    2. Suicidal
    3. Working hard to win the next "Darwin" award
    4. Roadkill
    5. All of the above
    We hear Chrysler will offer a matching helmet shaped like the head of a dart. They're calling this bike the "Tomahawk" because "Death Wish" was taken.
  24. ^ Grist, Peter (2015), Dodge Dynamite!, Veloce, ISBN 978-1845848231

Cite error: A list-defined reference named "Runk" is not used in the content (see the help page).
Cite error: A list-defined reference named "Patton" is not used in the content (see the help page).
Cite error: A list-defined reference named "Kiino2003" is not used in the content (see the help page).
Cite error: A list-defined reference named "Jensen2003" is not used in the content (see the help page).
Cite error: A list-defined reference named "2006PressRelease" is not used in the content (see the help page).
Cite error: A list-defined reference named "2009PressRelease" is not used in the content (see the help page).

Cite error: A list-defined reference named "MCN 2018" is not used in the content (see the help page).
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Dodge_Tomahawk&oldid=1018494528"