I don't need speakers to hear this...
The sound is burned into my memory...I watched, and heard, this very car in 1968 at the Gran Prix of Monaco...That race was not run on a dedicated racetrack, but rather on the streets of Monte Carlo...We arrived a couple of days early in my 1956 VW sedan so we could watch the practice laps...These were not run at speed, the drivers had to contend with normal street traffic just to familiarize themselves with the circuit...So I got to watch Jean-Pierre Beltoise impatiently pick his way through Citroen 2CV's, Lotus Europas and Bentley saloons while memorizing turns, pavement angles and landmarks for the upcoming race...Then I got to watch again as he and the other drivers whizzed by us, only slowing down for the curves then rowing through the gears again to get back up to speed...Our viewpoint was somewhere near the casino, but the only time we got close to the cars was during practice...
But the real memory is in the sound of that Matra V-12...It was never a successful engine on the track, but the music it made was unforgettable...Three liters of displacement, four overhead cams, it was naturally aspirated with mechanical fuel injection...The cylinder pairing and the exhaust timing are what contributed to the sound, and also aided in scavenging the exhaust from the next pulse...Note how the six exhaust pipes are paired from two cylinders that fired 360 crankshaft degrees from each other...I hope my memory of that is correct because it's how the sound was explained to me...
Beltoise retired early with engine problems...Only five cars finished with Graham Hill taking the checkered flag...It was my one and only Gran Prix and this video brings the memory of that sound back to me...:zoom:...Ben
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZwlI6U3pLg