Colotti Trasmissioni
Italian mechanical engineering firm
Colotti Trasmissioni (Colotti Transmission) is an Italian mechanical engineering firm located in Modena, Italy. It specializes in gears, limited-slip differentials and transmission systems for racing cars.
History 1958-1979
Valerio Colotti, who is famous as the chassis designer/engineer of the Maserati 250F, started his own company called Tec-Mec in 1958. One of the first achievements was the design and manufacture of differential gear set/housing for Rob Walker, which solidified his reputation in the Grand Prix circles.
After building a GP car for Jean Behra, which became known as Behra-Porsche, Colotti built his own Grand Prix car named Tec-Mec F415, based on Maserati 250F in 1959, with Fritz d'Orey as the driver who finished 10th at the 1959 French Grand Prix. At about the same time, Alf Francis, the Chief Engineer at Rob Walker Racing, started working with Colotti, changing the Tec-Mec name to Colotti-Francis.
Colotti-Francis was responsible for a Formula Junior car named T.C.A. (Trips Colotti Automobili) built for Graf von Trips, but this project ended with Trips' death at the 1961 Italian Grand Prix held at Monza, where his Ferrari 156 collided with Jim Clark's Lotus 21, when a third-place finish would have secured Count Trips the first ever Grand Prix World Championship title for a German, which did not materialize until 1994.
Rob Walker asked Colotti to analyse and modify the front suspension of two Lotus racing cars belonging to Rob Walker Racing, and the plausible result prompted Rob Walker to let Colotti review the design of his own Grand Prix car, Walker Special, which was being built at the time. With the new 1.5-liter Formula One regulation going into effect for the 1960 season, Colotti designed and built the T.32 5-speed and T.34 6-speed transaxles. These weighed less than 35 kg and were suitable for lower-torque, high-rev 1.5-liter engines mounted behind the driver.
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