During his Formula one career, Gordon Murray has always produced beautiful cars, with some interesting technical innovative solutions to circumvent the ever more restrictive F1 rules. But it didn't work all the time.
His last Brabham car to ever win a Grand Prix, the Brabham BT54, was a relatively conventional car, but always elegant and beautiful. Due to the use of Pirellis, the car couldn't win a Grand prix in normal conditions due to the problems of Pirelli's insufficient functioning temperatures.
The decision to chose the italian manufacturer rather than Goodyear was partially, as some have suggested, a political Bernie Ecclestone's decision to avoid, as a FOCA leader, the Goodyear monopoly on F1 after Michelin had left the boat at the end of 1984. But maybe, at least in theory, that was because the Pirellis were more capable of handling the huge BMW Turbo engine torque allowing to run non stop races. Anyway, at the end, that wasn't a very good idea.
The exception, however, happened under the hot sun of french Riviera in july 1985, when the extremely hot conditions and the Paul Ricard's abrasive tarmac suited finally to the Brabham's cold Pirellis avoiding Nelson Piquet to stop for tyres change unlike the main Goodyear mounted cars did inevitably.
Nobody knew at that time that this will be the last Brabham win ever.
Unfortunatly, after that year, what used to be one of the most successfull racing teams in the 70s and the 80s was going to go down slowly in F1 rankings.
I don't know if there are scale models of the Brabham BT54 made by diecast and kit models manufacturers, except at MERI kits, but I've found at least an artisanal custom model made by a brazilian diorama builder:
Here's his blog address > Fabrica de pilotos
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