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Why the Negativity (Stirling Moss) - Fangio said it was the greatest Formula 1 car he'd ever driven

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Why not put that in the article (instead of Stirling Moss's comment that it was the "worst").

Fangio, when asked if he would drive the BRM 15 again: "I will. I consider it to be, basically, the best Formula One car ever made. All it needs is improvement in certain details. No car has ever given me such a thrill to drive, or a greater sense of absolute mastery. I will stand by it".

Fangio never had a chance to drive it again, as he subsequently had his worst crash, at Monza in 1952.

86.145.6.113 (talk) 01:15, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you can provide a reliable source for that quote, it can be added to the article. It would make an interesting comparison against Moss' view of the car. DH85868993 (talk) 03:41, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Quote is within the article for the engine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Racing_Motors_V16

Paragraph containing the quote:

"After a particularly trying time with reliability problems during a 1952 race at Ulster, Fangio was asked if he would ever drive the BRM again. He replied; "I will. I consider it to be, basically, the best Formula One car ever made. All it needs is improvement in certain details. No car has ever given me such a thrill to drive, or a greater sense of absolute mastery. I will stand by it". Unfortunately for both Fangio and BRM, the following day, tired after an overnight drive from Folkingham across Europe to Monza for a race, he crashed while driving for Maserati, breaking his neck, retiring from racing to recover until early 1953."

86.173.142.68 (talk) 07:03, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen lots of praise from Fangio, along the lines of him loving the challenge of the car, so when I redo the page (see below) I'll incorporate some sort of "opinions of the car" section.Spiderlounge (talk) 16:52, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How about this for a Stirling Moss quote:
"There was a vast difference between the BRM and any other car I had yet driven. When I opened the throttle, even at high speeds in top gear, the whole thing shuddered with a frightening surge of power. It could spin its wheels effortlessly at speeds equal to many other car's maximum. It was doing 187 on the straight at Monza which was too quick for a car that didn't handle. If you let the revs drop much below 9,000 the car just wouldn't go at all"
.. from book back cover here: [1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 18:25, 30 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with British Racing Motors V16

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  • Support I think it would be sensible to merge this article with British Racing Motors V16. These two articles are so similar, and in many respects I have to say the V16 page is probably better than this one, although there are useful sections on both pages. The chassis and engine are inseparable, each being used exclusively in conjunction with the other. I think it would be best for the merged article to reside at BRM 15 as being the product of a single project this is how both car and engine were collectively described in race entries, although some may consider it desirable to keep a V16 page dealing exclusively with the technical details of the engine. If you have a view then don't be afraid to say so one way or the other. Spiderlounge (talk) 12:12, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose I have no interest in reading about F1. I have a lot of interest in engines. There is sufficient material in both of these topics to sustain a good article on each. There are at least two books out there (just on my shelves) on BRM engines, rather than the cars, and Ludvigsen's is on this engine specifically. Anyone who wants to read both can follow the link pretty easily. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:26, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Andy Dingley has made very little attempt to actually look at what this entails. The BRM V16 engine only ever appeared in the Type 15 and Type 30; both of which are actually in the BRM 15 article. Generally, it is very rare to have standalone articles on individual engines; the DFV engine is an obvious exception, but highly notable ventures such as the TAG-Porsche engine don't have their own articles. In this case, the engine has no independent notability of the car; it's almost always discussed as a reference to the car, and the car itself is usually called the BRM V16. Both articles need a lot of work, and regardless of the result, both need renaming; BRM Type 15 (or something that rolls the Type 30 into the name) for the car, and BRM V16 engine for the motor, if they're kept separate. If they're merged, I suggest the title be "BRM V16" Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 13:12, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Luke, "go forth and fornicate"† now and don't ever tell me how much I've looked into an article beforehand. † edited by Spiderlounge. Keep it clean please gents.
"it is very rare to have standalone articles on individual engines" is nonsense. Just counting a few cats, we have over 200 and most of those are on engines far less notable (in the sense of RS attention paid to them) than the BRM V16. The idea that Other Stuff Doesn't Exist per the TAG-Porsche is obviously wrong, and you ought to know better. The current engine article is the weakest, as it has a lot of content in there on the car and its racing career, but very little on the engine. That whole section ought to be moved to the car article. In that sense, I'd support "merging" of that section alone.
Per WP:IMPERFECT though, we should name articles based on where we want to get to, not where we're starting from. There are two good, notable topics here and we should keep them separate. For very little work there's a good article nearly there already on the Type 15. There is still a need and a justification though for a separate article on the V16 engine (and on several other BRM engines too). Surprisingly, given how much is written on BRMs, both articles are poorly sourced. That's the main reason why Type 15 couldn't get near GA at present.
As to the P30, then create a redirect and keep the body of the article content where it is in the Type 15 article.
For naming, then anyone who cares deeply enough can rename per rigid naming formulae, but it's never all that important. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:23, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Point 1 (ignoring your posturing, which is immature and pointless): Most articles are on engine series, not on individual engines. I can list multiple engines that are highly notable, but lack their own articles (as in, BRM V16 or beyond): Cosworth BDA. Cosworth YB. Lotus' IndyCar engine. The aforementioned TAG-Porsche engine. I don't have an issue with engine articles per-se, but there's little sense in including one that has no independent notability.
  • Point 2: Sourcing is indeed the biggest problem, and if the articles are to remain separate, the amount of racing history information in the engine article is overkill. I could see a justification for the BRM H16 engine (given that this was used in far more than one car, and in non-BRMs as well), but not really the V16 one; it's a pure overlap between the Type 15/30 and the engine.
  • Point 3: What?
  • Point 4: WP:COMMONNAME would disagree with both titles, and the "BRM 15" name is downright wrong. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 14:41, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Play nice please children... We seem to have two competing proposals: First - that there be a single article on the chassis, the engine, the racing, the lot. Second - that there be an article exclusively dealing with the engine, with all strictly non-relevant information (particularly the racing history) being merged with the car page. I could happily go along with either of these proposals.
As for names, I think in most cases people will look for BRM rather than British Racing Motors, so the engine article (if there is to be one) should be moved to BRM V16 at the very least. As for the naming of the car, I've seen various names shown on various sources and entry lists - BRM 15, BRM P15, BRM Type 15, BRM V16 Mk.1, etc... If anyone can source a definitive answer then I'm all ears. Spiderlounge (talk) 15:08, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - BRM V16 engine was, in my opinion, far more revolutionary for the time than Cosworth DFV can ever dream of claiming, and I wouldn't be surprised if Harry Mundy (later of Coventry Climax, who designed the Type 15 gearbox and worked on the V16 engine) and Keith Duckworth (who created the DFV) shared this view. On the other hand, BRM 15/30 did not break much grounds in the design, nor did they become world champions. The work on the V16 engine began before the formation of BRM, making the "single project" argument very weak, and the tradition in Formula One at the time was to list both the chassis and engine manufacturer like "Lotus-Climax" on the entry sheet so the reason "BRM 15" appeared on them is not because the engine and the chassis were recognized collectively, but was to avoid the repetition of "BRM-BRM" because they were made by the same entity. How many times have you seen a 1.5 L supercharged 16 cylinder engine in your life? I have seen many unsuccessful F1 chassis. Independent notability is definitely there for the V16 engine. Yiba (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:11, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see your point about the notability of the engine, but the reason (in addition to it's importance) that the DFV has its own page is because it was used in about eleventy-million different cars and formulas. The BRM V16 was only ever run in the BRM 15/30 chassis, and the BRM 15/30s were only ever powered by the V16. That is why some (including myself) tend to view the two as inseparable in our minds.
I would be interested in a reference showing the V16 began development before Mays began to suggest the BRM project. I'm not suggesting you're wrong, but if you're not I've misunderstood a part of the story and I'd like to get it straight. Spiderlounge (talk) 15:28, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not really sure where Yiba's vote comes from. The engine was designed for the car, and the car designed for the engine, so "single project" is pretty damn accurate - the exact naming of companies (or existence of companies) is irrelevant. And whether something is revolutionary or not isn't that relevant either (and I wouldn't call it particularly revolutionary, batshit crazy is more accurate); nor must something have to be successful to be notable (and, for obvious reasons, the car itself was unsuccessful in conjunction with the engine.) It simply isn't standard procedure to have individual articles on engines used in one setup only. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 15:39, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The engine was designed for the car, " No it wasn't. This engine had a lot of influences, but the two main ones are Pomeroy's pre-war design for a British Union GP car, a highly supercharged 135º V16 with vane superchargers and also Hooker's work on the two-stage supercharger for the Merlin XX. At some point during a lull in the Battle of Britain, some bright spark in Derby had the idea that taking that same two-stage supercharger, shrinking it, and then bolting it to a many-cylindered engine with pistons tiny enough not to self-destruct would make one hell of a GP engine. This is years before BRM or the Type 15. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:02, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
VERY interested in the early origins of the V16 now! Please cite some references and I'll try to look them up.
Not sure anyone suggested the engine was designed for a pre-existing car, the car was definitely designed for the engine and without engine there'd be no car. It seems from these two snippets above though that without this particular car the engine would have existed though. Spiderlounge (talk) 16:09, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's hard to give cut-and-dried refs for this because there were _so_many_ similar engines being designed immediately pre-war. There was a general feeling, across all the makers, that 16 cylinders were going to be the next step after 12. One of the Italians (Alfa Romeo or Maserati, I forget) even started work on their new engine in 1944, getting a head start on the rest of Europe. The Pomeroy connection, and the rest, will certainly be in Ludvisgen's book on this specific engine (and it's hard to see how anyone can be pontificating here that the engine is unimportant without having read that). The R-R involvement is probably somewhere in Hooker's bio. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:21, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Spiderlounge, please think for a moment if Colin Chapman was successful in making DFV exclusive to Lotus for the life of the engine, and if it won over 100 GP races on Lotus chassis. It still retains an individual notability because it won so many races, not because it was used on many different makes. NGK flat-top racing spark plugs have been used on gazillion different makes, engines and on GP victories, yet it might never warrant an individual article although I think it deserves one in the history of motor racing because it marked a critical advancement in racing technology. So a 'notability', or an 'importance' has many angles that we need to be careful not to judge from one standpoint only.
In the case of BRM V16, it may be just another unsuccessful F1 engine/chassis combination if one takes the standpoint of a GP result analyst, but the engine was one of the most significant British technical achievements in the history of motor sport from my standpoint. To recognize it revolutionary or a madness rests in the eyes of the beholder and in his/her knowledge on the subject. Yet another factor on individual vs. combined article is the amount of information on the subject. I have been editing Cosworth article, which is growing to a size where I might have to create a separate article for BDA engines, for example, for easier reading, and I'd think BRM V16 article already has enough amount of info for an article. To me, the important V16 info being used to supplement not-so-important Type 15 article in merging the two is pure sadness.
BRM V16, designed about 1947-48, was not created for Type 15. The chassis came into being at least one or two years later. I remember reading that the initial work on the engine began earlier (1945-46?), soon after some German documents were obtained from the occupied Germany, but I couldn't find the article/book (at least 20-30 years old). The BRM name may have been registered in 1945, but it was the plan for the V16 engine that convinced the trust fund participants to join, that resulted in the actual formation of BRM, from what I remember. Ever wonder why British Racing Motors is not called the "British Racing Cars"?. Yiba (talk) 06:27, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't quite understand which one of your points I am supposed to be in disagreement with... Is this an argument for merging the car article into the engine article rather than the other way around? If it is, how would you suggest we satisfy those who wish the engine article to focus on the engine alone and not include the overall car's racing history?
My key over-riding point, let me remind you, is that we currently have two very similar, highly overlapping articles and I think that needs to be resolved "somehow". Spiderlounge (talk) 08:03, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for the confusion. If you describe it that way, then I'm forced to say don't agree with your key over-riding point. Wikipedia articles and their presentations are supposed to reflect variety of viewpoints, and I consider this similar/overlapping situation with two articles is far less harmful than merging them by ignoring the viewpoints taken by Andy Dingley and myself. I consider the V16 engine to be a far more important part of the history than the Type 15/30 as a whole car is, and I'd appreciate your trying to see that your well-intended effort to solve the not so pretty situation might brutally kill my view point. We can't satisfy those who wish the engine article to focus on the engine alone and not include the overall car's racing history and vice versa if we choose to merge the two articles. I can see other viewpoints hating to see the mess, and seeing the merging of a car article into an engine article to be out of the question (so merging the engine article into the car article instead is 'obviously' prefered). The best solution to me, who values the V16 info so much more, would be to edit the 15/30 article so that there is no similarity/overlap, but that would be very difficult to do without losing its value (if you could do that, I am very happy), so my next best alternative is to live with the overlap. Please note that majority of Wiki users would read one or the other of the two articles depending on his/her interest, and the mess we are dealing with does not concern these people. For these reasons I feel I over-killed, I am against merging the two articles. Yiba (talk) 09:42, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think I can see where Spiderlounge is coming from here, as the two articles we have at present are both car articles that would be better if merged. However we still have a need for an engine article (as a notable topic), which at present we barely have anything on. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:55, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hope no-one minds me starting again from the right, we're in danger of falling off the edge of the page... I'll let the discussion continue for a few days yet before making any changes but at this point I'd draw the following conclusions based on what's been said:

  1. I think there is a reasonable consensus that merging the engine article into the car article is undesirable.
  2. I think there is a similar consensus that merging the car article into the engine article is also undesirable.
  3. I think there is a consensus that the two articles are too similar and in need of differentiation.
  4. I think there is a feeling that the engine article is unfocused, containing too much information on the car's racing history and not nearly enough information about the technical aspects of the engine.
  5. In my view it would make sense for the race history of the car to be largely removed from the engine article save for the briefest of summaries, and for this section of the car article and others to be expanded and improved.
  6. Both articles are lacking in references.

I think that's a reasonably distillation of everyone's thoughts but if you disagree by all means go ahead and say so! Spiderlounge (talk) 20:33, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd agree with that. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:39, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Spiderlounge, I respect your intelligence and tenacity in the quest for improving the quality of articles, and I like the level-headed approach to the discussion. Please keep in mind that these are the basis of the following statements.
I agree with the first two, and the last points.
As to the points 3, 4 and 5, I think a much broader discussion that is not fit for this space would be needed to form a well-informed consensus.
Many WikiProjects, which are often formed to improve the quality of articles in a field, have shown the same mistake "in my mind", to place a "clean and orderly presentation" ahead of preserving and promoting a "variety of viewpoints" in the priority, to the point the privilege for the editors to form a project, in my opinion, is at the risk of being revoked, because the Neutral Point of View policy is so much more important to Wikipedia. As Wikipedia is more a process than a collection of articles at one particular time, no Wiki article is ever going to be perfect, and that is the very source of its beauty and power. In a way, a certain level of 'messiness' is built in the design. (Of course this does not mean we shouldn't strive for better quality of each article. It's just a reflection of the priority scale.) I'd like you to see the importance of NPOV as a core policy in relation to the importance of clean presentation and any customary convention. I wish the NPOV, Titles and Merge pages would have a section on this point in the future, with the emphasis on variety of viewpoints.
From my viewpoint, the V16 engine (which was the core for the formation of BRM as a collection of top British brains) is like Ayers Rock in Australia as opposed to the 15/30 being like a grain of sand in the importance in the history of motorsport. And I am against the removal of race history from the engine article for that reason. Judging from the articles you created/edited, I consider you to be a very good editor. But being a good editor does not give us the right to bulldoze other viewpoints (OK, to a certain extent it might a bit, but...), and so please do not subtract value from the engine article. In sharing my views, I might contribute to the V16 article in the future but that is a whole different subject/decision.
To put it succinctly, I feel the agreement not to merge the two articles is enough for the purpose of this space.
Yiba (talk) 06:53, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What does #3 "the two articles are too similar and in need of differentiation." mean? IMHO. at present they're too close (so work is needed). Although in an ideal structure they would be separate (so merging is inappropriate).
I really need to read the full history of the car again. AFAIR though, the race history doesn't have all that much relevance to the engine specifically, i.e. there weren't spectacular races lost because the engine failed in some distinctive and design-relevant way. There were two over-heating problems, the poor water circulation was never fixed and they just put up with it, the infamous leg-roasting at Albi was caused by the exhausts inside the bodywork and was fixed by venting the bodywork rather than changing the engine. I'm just not seeing a racing career (like that of many other cars) where, "We led at Silverstone until we blew up the sprong brackets, so we fitted stronger ones and then won at Monza". About the nearest to this is when Mays put some blame wrongly onto the bearing shells, causing Tony Vandervell to go off in a huff.
IMHO, the BRM V16 and the Type 15 are very like Donald Campbell's Bluebird CN7. BRM were _not_ a collection of top British brains (at least not the shop floor). They were famously described once as a bunch of garage mechanics pulled out of their railway arches and completely out of their depth. I think it was someone from Mercedes who described the engine as excellent, but too complex for a small outfit like Bourne to ever be capable of fully developing. Yet like Campbell they somehow managed to persuade a whole bunch of big name British engineering companies to design, manufacture and develop components for them, without charging anything like their real cost. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:37, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Pretty much the complete opposite. Wingfoot Express, possibly, as high-speed tyres are important for LSR and both Dunlop and Goodyear had always been generous sponsors of LSR efforts. Green Monster though was pure shade-tree mechanics. The commercial engine makers wouldn't touch it with a bargepole and there was even talk at one time of arresting Arfons for spying. Sponsorship (as money) matters and technical sponsorship is even better, but Campbell and BRM took that to whole new heights. Today, Bloodhound SSC is doing a bit of the same, where previous Thrust cars had far less of it, and it just being a simpler cash handout. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:05, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
While they sprung from the same sense of patriotism there's a key difference between the BRM project and the Bluebirds - the Bluebirds were reasonably successful in achieving what they set out to do. In researching this car I can't believe how badly managed the whole project was, and just how many opportunities they passed up. There were 13 Championship Grands Prix in 1950 and 1951, and BRM entered two, starting just one. That's pathetic in my view. Time and again they seemed to turn up late to races, or not at all, and when Tony Rudd suggested the car be used for an attempt on the Class F land speed record they decided against it, but in 1957 Stirling Moss famously took the record in an MG with less than half the power of the V16. The idea behind the car was ambitious but fairly sound, but the execution (in terms of a successful racing campaign) was just woeful.
What I mean about differentiation is that if you're talking about a racing car it's probably enough to say "engine problems", but in an engine article you'd say something more like "cylinder heads lifting due to the supercharger pressure, letting water into the cylinders". Likewise in the engine section you'd talk about the cars being withdrawn at Monza because the gearboxes were seizing up, but in a comprehensive race report you'd mention the problems with Ken Richardson's licence, which clearly have nothing to to with the engine. It's about trimming away the overlap in the two articles, then deciding which article expands into the subjects currently not covered by either.
One problem I may not be the only one to have noticed is that the engine article very closely follows the pattern of (and at times is a word for word transcription of) Karl Ludvigsen's talk on the BRM on YouTube. Others will know the rules on this better than me, but I'm guessing that's not healthy. Spiderlounge (talk) 18:41, 11 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The contrast between BRM and MG is very interesting. MG built its racing successes on Wolseley SOHC engines, although Cecil Kimber was quite effective in hiding that fact from the public (to the point that a large number of the current MG club members in the US still insist that MMM engines were MG engines), and the development talents in their racing shop was the source of the success. BRM was quite the opposite in having excellent engine design and mediocre production/development talents. I feel pre-Tony Rudd BRM chassis to be not much more than a moving engine test bed, based on pre-war Mercedes and Auto Union designs.
Spiderlounge, I hear you, I hear you well in your last comment. What I have been telling you for the past several days are very counter-intuitive to you. "Engine articles should concentrate on engine matters only.", "Car articles should not go into engine technical details.", these are for the "Cleaner and Orderly Presentation" and not for the quality of individual articles. Please remember there are many many readers who read only one or the other of V16 or 15/30 articles, and for these readers, the omission for the sake of clean division is a loss. For a Wikiproject, cleaner and orderly presentation is a high priority item, but for Wikipedia as a whole, NPOV through preservation and promotion of variety of viewpoints (like Andy Dingley's who doesn't want to read about near-dead F1 of the time, or mine who place so much importance on the engine side only) is a far higher priority.
On the otherhand, I did not know about Karl Ludvigsen's talk, and I'd think your concern may be well justified.
Yiba (talk) 11:56, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I quite like '50s and '60s F1, it was the later decades when it became so deadly dull. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:40, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Corrected Typo.Yiba (talk) 08:29, 13 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Spiderlounge, for removing the merge proposal. I am having a difficulty in trying to replace the poor Engine balance article. The problem is mostly on how to explain technical concepts in plain language, and if someone cares to help, I'd appreciate it. My work so far is under "Engine balance" heading in my own Sandbox. Yiba (talk) 14:14, 24 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ludvigsen's book (preview) on the BRM V16 on googlebooks here: [2] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 18:14, 30 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's all very well criticising BRM but it should be born in mind that much of their engineering resources were donated to them by companies who had little involvement in racing, and who in many cases provided their work/components for free. Compare this to the likes of Alfa Romeo and Ferrari, who not only had vastly bigger budgets, but also long experience in motor racing. Try developing a racing car and engine from scratch to meet a deadline when your suppliers are doing the work in many cases in their spare time and for no payment, and so can't really be pushed for a delivery date of their particular parts.
The fact is that BRM got off their arses and did something, while everyone else did nothing - something the latter have in common with most critics, most of whom have also never done anything useful or productive in their lives.
When BRM was founded there was still widespread rationing in Britain, including on quantities of metals that were available and on what the government would allow to be manufactured - some manufactured items were only allowed to be made for export, for example. So BRM was trying to operate under difficult conditions that few racing teams have had to operate under before or since.
BTW, Fangio didn't seem to think there was too much wrong with the car/engine. I suspect that most of the other, more critical, drivers were simply scared of it, although that's no reflection on them. With all that power and those skinny tyres it couldn't help but be a bit of a handful. But the likelihood is that if it had been raced and had finished, then it would have comprehensively thrashed everything. Events, and a fair amount of bad luck prevented that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 15:39, 10 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Renaming the page

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I've read a lot of comments and source material that indicates I made a mistake in naming the page "BRM 15", although I'm still not clear what it should be called except that "BRM 15" isn't it. Various names have been seen, "BRM Type 15" and "BRM V16 Mk1" being the most common, so once a consensus has been reached on what to do with the two separate chassis and engine articles I'd like some feedback (with references if possible) as to what the definitive name of this page should be. Spiderlounge (talk) 16:59, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's difficult to find sources for this, as most (it being the first car) simply call it "The BRM". The most popular long-term is probably "the V-16 BRM" (i.e. a descriptive annotation), quite a few "the 1½litre BRM" and I can't find any that refer to it as "the BRM V-16" in an ordinal sense, as if that were an official name. Overall I'd use BRM Type 15, which is as defensible as anything else and has the virtue of unambiguous clarity. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:40, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen "BRM V16 Mk I" and "BRM V16 Mk II" used to describe the two cars quite a bit, but I agree "BRM Type 15" is probably the safest bet, unless some authoritative answer can be found. Even the bloody name of this car is complicated...! Spiderlounge (talk) 17:56, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How about BRM P15? Fits with the rest. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:23, 8 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If only it did! The BRM Type 25 (the 2.5l car that was raced in the late 50s) was emphatically not the P25 - that referred to the engine, The chassis was P27. Later on the cars are known by their P numbers (which is just as well, otherwise there'd be half a dozen more Type 15s to worry about) but Doug Nye is adamant that the Type 25 was NOT the P25, so what that means for the V16 car god alone knows. I think the problem here is the car probably didn't have one official name but several.
I could perhaps see the logic that it started as "Project One (point) Five" which then later morphed into the chronological history of projects undertaken, but why call the Type 25 the Type 25 if not to distinguish the car from its constituent projects? P15 could have referred to the engine, with BRM Mk I being the car's overall name... I have no great confidence in any one answer.
It's a similar sort of mess to the D, E, and F-type Jaguars - Why no A and B type? Because C stood for 'Competition'... Spiderlounge (talk) 00:09, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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