Here’s the latest Tony Matthews masterpiece at Mac’s Motor City Garage—and easily one of the most important Indy cars in history: the 1994 Penske PC23.
The Penske PC23 was a significant Indy car in its own right, sweeping everything in its path in the 1994 season—its astonishing record includes seven wins in a row and 1-2-3 finishes at Milwaukee and Portland. But even more memorably, the PC 23 was also the vessel for the infamous Ilmor 500I, the pushrod Indy engine that shattered the Speedway’s rulebook into a thousand pieces. The engine project was so kept so secret that even our resident artist was kept in the dark for a time. Here’s Tony with his first-hand narrative:
The Penske PC23
by Tony Matthews
Of all the Penskes that I’ve had the privilege of illustrating, the PC23 is the second most significant to me. The first is probably the PC17, the first of the Nigel Bennett cars, and the cutaway that more or less cemented my relationship with Penske Cars for some years. The PC23, however, was a cutaway that started out in the usual way, then abruptly turned into a much bigger story. As usual, I was contacted by Philip Morris in October 1993 and asked if I would prepare a cutaway for the following season, and as usual I called Penske cars about permission and timing.
I drove to Penske Cars on October 29, 1993 and again on November 2, when I saw a complete car, but fitted with a dummy engine and gearbox, before it was taken for wind-tunnel testing. The wind tunnel used by Penske Cars was a 40 percent scale moving ground plane tunnel at Southampton University, just down the road from the Penske factory, so this chassis was taken to the full-scale MIRA tunnel in Warwickshire.
It was not unusual to have to visit the factory – always a pleasure – more than once, unless everything worked out for the assembly, nothing late or missing, and time for me to take my photographs. The advantage of an early visit was seeing the tub in two halves, top and bottom, with the front bulkheads in position in the lower half. This made the construction of the front end, the most intricate part of the tub, easier on the drawing board.
Due to other commitments the cutaway wasn’t started until late February, and finished and taken to be photographed on March 28. By this time, in an effort to ‘add value’ to the Champcar cutaways, I was offering both Super Speedway and Short Oval/Road Course (SO/RC) configurations, involving a change of wings, screens, brakes, brake ducts and radiator ducting. This was achieved by painted paper overlays, lightly tacked in place and the artwork re-photographed. Simple and effective, but involving forward planning. However, forward planning couldn’t take into account the major changes that were about to be unleashed.
Firstly I started changing the PC23 to Speedway set-up, only to have a call to say that a full length fin had suddenly appeared on the engine cover of the SO/RC car—so back to SO/RC trim, add the fin, re-photograph and FedEx to Long Beach. Then, back to Speedway trim, and it was now that the major excitement occurred, when I was told that the PC23 would be using a completely different engine for the Indy 500—the now-famous 265E/500I. A trip to Ilmor was arranged for April 21, and a few days later I went to Penske yet again, then re-drew and painted the engine, headers, header glove, humped engine cover with truncated fin, and Indy pop-off valve.
The whole Speedway car was then assembled and delivered to my friendly local photographic studio for a set of 10” x 8”, 5” x 4”, and 35mm transparencies, which were sent out to Indianapolis on Monday, May 9. Job done. Then I started the Lola T94. The 1994 Indy 500 was a mesmerising race for me, with so much riding on the outcome for both Penske and Ilmor, two companies I had huge admiration and affection for. Paul Tracy’s early exit, Emerson Fittipaldi’s late crash, and a win for Al Unser Jr made it one of the great races.
The cutaway image below is high resolution. Left-click to open and left-click again to open to full size.
Text and images copyright Tony Matthews, all rights reserved. Used by permission. Be sure to see Tony’s other great cutaways at Mac’s Motor City Garage. Links open in new windows:
I have a signed Tony Matthews print of generic 84C, if I remember correctly it came from the March factory. About 2′ x 3′ number 416 /500. Need to sell, do you have any idea of what it is worth?