Finally, the transmission housings of the 1980s contained the engine oil reservoir. The lubricant is pressure fed to the engine, then scavenged and returned to the transmission-housed tank. That's all changed. A contemporary car's engine oil reservoir is housed between the back face of the chassis and the front face of the engine. This shifts the mass of the oil forward, helping the car's weight distribution, and allowing the transmission housing to be significantly smaller. And magnesium is very much passé. Today's vogue material is either titanium or carbon. The R27 Renault uses cast titanium, a lengthy and costly process, titanium is difficult to work but well worth the perseverance, the end results are quite spectacular. Ferrari prefer to use a titanium framework clad with carbon, adding support to the suspension pick-ups and engine mountings
Suspension:
A major design evolution of the MP4-4 was a change to its front suspension. The MP4-3 had used a bulky pushrod and high-mounted rocker assembly. The MP4-4 made use of pullrods. Doing away with that cumbersome pushrod arrangement allowed the dampers and coil springs to be mounted much lower in the car, helping with stability and handling.
Personally, I always hated working on pullrod suspension, it's an absolute nightmare: You can't see anything, you can't get access to anything, frayed temper, constantly cut hands... Horrible! However, in this particular case, having looked at the front suspension arrangement of the MP4-3, it would seem that McLaren's change to pullrods was a wise move; it must have been an improvement.
The suspension wishbones aboard the MP4-4 are steel, Keyphos coated, giving a chic semi-matt black finish. Not a single piece of carbon suspension was used in 1988; it would be another five years before
designers felt sufficiently brave to toy with that idea.
And toy with it they did, contemporary cars have no steel wishbones. Everything is carbon. Pullrods are (thankfully) out of vogue too: all 2007 cars use pushrods, carbon, naturally. The move to pushrods has been made possible because everything has become so much smaller and lighter, hence no appreciable handling penalty to pay for having components mounted higher in the car.
Aerodynamics:
I've always liked the lines of the MP4-4, and the move away from that bulky pushrod arrangement of previous years allowed the bodywork around the driver's legs to be pulled inward a little tighter; the flanks of the 1988 car are far cleaner. The nose was narrowed too, another significant improvement over the MP4-3. Furthermore, the fact the MP4-4 continued to use that additional clip-on bodywork to cover the unsightly carbon monocoque allowed McLaren to conceal the chassis-mounted front suspension clevises and bolts, shrouding them from the airflow.
Back in 1988 it was common practice for these suspension clevises to be exposed; the brackets bolted directly to the outside of the tub. Back then not much thought was given to details like that. Today, however, the very idea of having suspension mountings and their associated fixings exposed to airflow is farcical. A designer suggesting such a thing on Monday morning would not be a designer come Monday evening.
Contemporary cars have their mountings bonded within the carbon plies of the monocoque; any fixings on the outside of the chassis are designed to sit flush. Nothing is (or looks like) an afterthought. With the FIA constantly rewriting the regulations to take downforce away, the aerodynamic detailing on the latest generation of F1 cars needs to be extremely impressive.
