Sunday 16 October 2022, 7:31 pm
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Engineers at the Pitesti car plant produced various prototypes of cars before 1989 Dacia. Among them, we have detached the model MD87, also called Ferrari from Romania.
Model Dacia MD87 was produced in 1987 at the Pitesti car plant, thanks to the efforts of a team led by engineer Nicolae Cosmescu.
The bodywork of a sporty Dacia has been radically modified and one has been fitted the engine central rear-wheel drive. A year later, the Dacia MD87 Evo appeared, equipped with retractable headlights. Only one copy of the two Romanian Dacia “supercars” was produced.
It did not look like a production Dacia at all, the only similar elements were the headlights taken from the Dacia 1310, the doors and the rims. However, it could easily be mistaken for an American sports car. MD would be derived from the name of the wife of the engineer Cosmescu (Monica) and her son (Dragoș).
PHOTO Nicolae Cosmescu
Nicolae Cosmescu later stated that the idea came to him after reading an interview with Henry Ford the second, in which he talked about the Ford GT40 model, in the Ford-Ferrari duel. In addition, the streamlined and bold design, in addition to the red color, reminded me of a Ferrari or Ford GT40 model.
The interior only had two seats and standard equipment from the brand at the time. The handbrake was hydraulic, in a completely new technical configuration. The gearbox was controlled by a lever which ran from the lever to the rear of the car, under the floor, but was protected by a fairing.
Instead of the conventional gearbox, the tank was mounted. The prototype was also chosen with four disc brakes. The car had a hydraulic handbrake. Two struts brought the vehicle’s stiffness to the desired level. The Cosmescu engineer team, consisting of two tinsmiths, a mechanic and an electrician, worked on this prototype for three months.
PHOTO Nicolae Cosmescu
In 1988, the car received an update. The main change was in the front where there was a hood with a descending line towards the front, like the supercars of the time.
Front view, the car was somewhat reminiscent of a Dacia model, but the rear was completely new and different from everything that existed then on the Romanian market. It looked like a real foreign racing car. The model remained at the prototype stage and was not mass produced due to some misunderstandings in the team that carried out the project.
PHOTO Nicolae Cosmescu
However, the MD87 model could not be used precisely in rally tests where the car seemed to have an advantage, on macadams (dirt roads). Neither of the two specialized pilots at speed on the coast and on the circuit, where they drove on asphalt, they did not adapt to the new configuration.
