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V-8 Engine Oakland-Pontiac 1930-31-32


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#1 marion5drsn

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Posted 12 December 2003 - 19:50

As some of you may know I have been doing some research on the above engine for several months. To give a short summation of the basic engine it had:
3.4375” by 3.375” bore and stroke 250.6 cubic inches displacement.
85 horsepower.5 to 1 compression ratio. A horizontal valve system and a very peculiar “L” head combustion chamber due to the horizontal valve system.

I haven’t been able to at this time to find the lobe lift or the rocker arm mechanical ratio. I have found out the timing which is 0+180+40 = 220 degrees on the intake and 45+180+15=240 degrees for the exhaust. But nowhere can I find the lift nor does anyone seem to know anything about this detail of the camshaft.

The Bolt that adjusts the valve clearance has a very small contact area due to the fact that it seems to be a part of the lash adjustment along with the bolt head being the thrusting/sliding part of the valve actuation. This dual duty means that it has a very small contact area due to the spherical radius of the bolt head contacting the valve stem. This radius I believe would have to be the same as the distance as the center of the rocker shaft to the contact area of the bolt head. This would be a large radius but still would produce a very small contact area.

One thing that this engine had in 1930 was a roller cam lobe follower something that The Lycoming /Cord engine needed but failed to have
in 1936-37. Many Cord owners according to the posts at the Cord 810/812 area added this roller.
M.L. Anderson

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#2 Henk

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Posted 16 December 2003 - 23:56

The Oakland V-8 was developed by Benjamin H. Anibal, chief engineer of Oakland-Pontiac. His unconventional horizontal valve design with triangular-type combustion chambers, as well as the valve operating mechanism, seems to be inspired by the layout of the earlier Guy V-8 engine.

In 1919 British truck manufacturer Guy Motors Ltd. of Wolverhampton briefly entered the luxury car field with an expensive V-8 engined model. Developed by Sydney Slater Guy, the 4072 cc (72 x 125 mm) 90-deg. engine was one of the first attempts to introduce the V-8 in Britain. But only 25 at most were ultimately sold. A less expensive 4-cyl. model, based on a single block of the V-8, was equally unsuccessful.

Guy’s V-8 design is described and illustrated in GB patent #150767. PDF-files available at
http://l2.espacenet....gb&LG=en&DB=EPD
[click on ‘requested patent’ number; then use arrows]

#3 marion5drsn

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Posted 19 March 2004 - 21:11

Specifications of 1930, 1931 & 1932 Oakland-Pontiac V-8
Bore & stroke of 3.4375” X 3.375”.
Displacement, 250.58 cubic inches.
Eight Intake valves Enbloc Siamesed, 4 ports.
Eight Exhaust valves Enbloc not Siamesed 8 ports
Horizontal valves adjustable by screw mechanism. (HOT)
Horsepower 1930-32 84 HP. 1932 85 HP.
Compression Ratio 1930-31 5.00 to 1, 1932 5.2 to 1.
Piston speed at 3,800 rpm was only 2137.5 Feet Per Minute.
At 3,000 piston feet per minute the rpm would have been 5333.3 rpm.
A t 4,000 piston feet per minute the rpm would have been 7,111 rpm.
The crankshaft was a 180-degrees but was balanced in the primary with four counterweights. The Horizontal Secondary shake was reduced by the use of a Horizontal Shake Damper called the Synchronizer.
This engine/car ran at Indianapolis in 1930 finishing 11th.
, a very respectful position for a car in such near stock roadster form, Claude Burton driver.
Wheelbase 117 inches. I have not been able to ascertain whether the 2 passenger Roadster was the same wheelbase or not for certain. If it were made on the Pontiac chassis it would be 112 inches. The only picture I have seems to make it to be shorter in the wheelbase and in the “tail” section placed to supplement and replace the heavy trunk area. The racecar also has the fenders, sidemounts, bumpers, lights, windshield, the top section of the canvas and its uprights, and the Lovejoy shocks are removed and replaced with Hartford friction shocks/dampers.

Edit April-08-2004. The Lovejoy shocks being replaced by Hartford is not correct as a new larger much clearer picture shows them to be Houdaille shocks. A product used mainly by Ford!



The wheels were replaced with racing wire wheels with knockoff hubs. Whether the starter was removed is not known. There is a starter crank shown in the picture this may have been use to lighten the car. The removal of the starter and its cables may have been removed. Starting handles were not taken off of cars until the middle 1930s.
Final gear ratios of the Spiral Bevel ring gear and pinion wheel were 4.42:1 std. 3.9:1 & 5.2:1 were optional.

This roadster model seems to have been dropped after 1930. The car did not appear to be lowered.

Automobile designer Benjamin H. Anibal designed the original Pontiac automobile (1926) for the Oakland Motor Company (it later became GM's Pontiac division)
Born on 12-2-1886 in Linden, Michigan expired 6-19-1977 in Royal Oak, Michigan age 91.
Anibal graduated from M.S.U. in 1909 in mechanical engineering. Started with the Olds. Motor Co. In 1909 he was with Cadillac Motor Co. from 1911-1921 and pioneered in producing the country's (U.S.A.) first V-8-cylinder car and industry's first electric lighting and starting equipment.

In 1925 he came to Oakland Motor Co. (Later Pontiac Motors) and was chief engineer until retirement in 1947. He is credited with some 200 automotive engineering advancements, including remote control gear shifts, multi-beam headlights, mechanical fuel pump, and automatic spark control. The engineering library at Michigan State University bares his name, as does a dormitory at Oakland University.

Just who and how the Synchronizer was developed is not known and I could not find anything about it. There is possibly a patent on it but I haven't the necessary apparatus to find it.

The distributor was manufactured without a centrifugal advance mechanism. Going by the numbers it appears to a very similar construction to the Cadillac and some Packard distributors with the numbers starting at 661 this distributor was used up until about 1937 by Buick, Graham. As I haven’t any books going back to very early models of this distributor I cannot say just when this unit was first used. It does appear that some models used a Vacuum advance but adapting the unit to an Oakland/Pontiac would be chancy unless some models of the Marvel carburetor have a tapped hole in the exact proper location to make the vacuum advance work effectively.

The reason that the flywheel is shown with a # 1 & # 7 is that the number Seven cylinder fires 360 degrees from # 1 cylinder. This is listed in some areas when the Firing order is changed to # 1-4-5-2-7-6-3-8 when numbered odd on the left cylinders and even numbers on the right cylinders. This is listed on page #35 of the Oakland Instruction Book. Cadillac used this numbering system from about 1935 to the time when Cadillac quit using this system after the big block 331/500 engine but is used to this day by Chevrolet and others such as Chrysler.

The dropping of this engine by General Motors is a small tragedy at General Motors as this was the same year that Ford introduced their 221 cubic inch V-8. Altho G.M. achieved the upper hand in production and sales over Ford it likely would have done even better if Pontiac had of been allowed to maintain and improve the Pontiac V-8. It was a superior engine to the Ford V-8 and I do not believe that it was dropped solely due to the Depression but to me more likely much of it was due to internal politics and jealousy at G.M./ Cadillac and possibly other divisions of G.M. The depression was a good excuse but I cannot believe it was the sole reason for the Pontiac V-8s demise. Jealousy at Cadillac must have been high due to the fact that their new engine was not designed at this time and they did not get the new mono-block engine into production until 1936. That was six years after the Anibal designed engine. Also remember that the tooling and the education of the works people at O-P were already achieved. Meanwhile Cadillac was producing the V-12s and V-16s; unneeded Show engines if ever one saw one.
G.M. did not need the Cadillac V-12s and V-16 engines as much as they should have had the Pontiac V-8 engine. The basic faults of the Pontiac V-8 with the 180- degree crank and the siamesed intakes would have been small and easily overcome in a short period of time as compared to the faults of the Cadillac V-8 engine even in 1930!


It should have been very easy to fix the lack of the 180-degree manifold principle that Ford introduced in 1933 and the use of a 90-degree crankshaft that Ford 1932 and Cadillac used in 1925.

The 600 series distributor continued to be used up until about 1938 by various engines so the addition of a vacuum advance mechanism also should not have been a problem. Just who used the vacuum advance first I do not know. I have not been able to find a date of actual usage or patent.

The fact that Pontiac had gone thru three years of manufacturing the V-8 and then the additional cost of designing a straight eight would seem to greatly decrease the strength of the argument that it was so much cheaper to manufacture a straight eight engine. One must never forget that tooling in those days was a big big factor in the first several years of manufacturing any engine. The V-8 engine was already made and the people producing the engine were already trained to produce parts and assemble the engine. Every thing was in place and production was rolling.
The argument that production of the straight 8 engine has to take into account that other manufacturers also were experiencing much lower sales in higher priced cars.

Another factor in the switch to the straight 8 engine is that it took, in those days, about three years from the decision to produce a new engine to actual production/assemble line rolling. This means that the decision to make the straight eight was about 1929 just when the Depression started. The stock market crash was just the big visible factor in the public awareness of the oncoming depression? Some people did recognize the economic problem in advance but did the people a G.M.? If the G.M. management anticipated this, it must have been crystal ball time at G.M. in 1929.

Trying to find the spark plugs from AC type G-12 18mm to the newer plugs is now a chore but the people that kept and held onto the O-P V-8 kept up with it when it was easy. The 1932 Pontiac was 14mm K12. Finding the proper reach on these old plugs is another chore.

New Champion D-21, Old Champion C-15, A-C -87 AutoLite-B11, NGK-A-6. Bosch M 7A

Partly created from a 1947 heat range list and current Champion list.
By Chris Klossner.
klossner@worldnet.att.net

According to the Bosch Handbook this plug has 18mm thread by 1.5 mm pitch, the electrode porcelain is recessed by 1.1 mm, single electrode, hex size is 26 mm (1.023”)


For a straight-8 crank in one of my books and should come up with one today but Logic tells me, # 1. The str-8 crank has five mains; V-8 has four. Str. 8 crank has eight separate conrod journals; V-8 has four. Isn’t something fishy here? Both a V-8 and the str. 8 crank have to be 90-degrees don’t they? The more I think about this the more I think that this is just common knowledge bunk! We have been led to believe that a V-8 crank is more expensive but it just doesn’t seem to be true after some examination. It would be very interesting to know if the Buick crank weighed more than a Cadillac. I know those old 1936-52 Buick (320 cubic inch) cranks were heavy, long and whippy compared to a Cadillac V-8 crank of the year’s 1936 t0 1948.

A peculiar thing in the horsepower rating of this engine between 1930 and 1932 is the fact that the horsepower was increased by only one horsepower after the compression ratio was increased by .2, but the rpm was reduced by 600. It would seem that if the horsepower were increased by such a small amount the rpm would be hardly affected, especially downwards. This engine seemed to be far down in its horsepower rating. It also had steel pistons while I believe many other engines had aluminum.

There seems to be a “myth” about just how expensive it is to make a V-8 crankshaft as opposed to a straight eight crankshaft. After much thought I am beginning to believe that it is just as expensive, or more, to make a straight 8 crank as a V-8 crank! I am looking at this from a manufacturing standpoint (Money), as it doesn’t seem to stand up to even an incomplete examination.

At the same time that Pontiac, 1932, dropped the V-8 Buick went from a str. Six to a str. Eight, 1931. But in percentage of sales one would need some large amount of sales record to see if the dropping of the V-8 was really justified. The stroke/bore ratio of Buick was inferior compared to the Pontiac V-8, Pontiac 98.2% versus the Buick at 133.3%. Also the engine was long. It wasn’t until 1937 that Buick got the engine situation sorted out at 248 cubic inches and 320 cubic inches. Also Buick had the conrod/rod bolt problem.

M.L. Anderson, March 19-2004

#4 Aanderson

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Posted 21 March 2004 - 02:19

[QUOTE]Originally posted by marion5drsn

Automobile designer Benjamin H. Anibal designed the original Pontiac automobile (1926) for the Oakland Motor Company (it later became GM's Pontiac division)
Born on 12-2-1886 in Linden, Michigan expired 6-19-1977 in Royal Oak, Michigan age 91.
Anibal graduated from M.S.U. in 1909 in mechanical engineering. Started with the Olds. Motor Co. In 1909 he was with Cadillac Motor Co. from 1911-1921 and pioneered in producing the country's (U.S.A.) first V-8-cylinder car and industry's first electric lighting and starting equipment.

Aninbal pioneered the auto industry's first electrical lighting and starting equipment? I think that the credit for the first practical automotive electric lighting and starters goes to Charles F. Kettering and his Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO) does it not? That's where the first modern generator/battery/voltage regulator electrical supply system, along with the first practical electric starter originated. Anibel may well have have a role in adapting these two bits of technology to the first car to use them, that being the 1912 Cadillac, but those two developments have always (and appropriately) credited to Kettering and his company, DELCO.


The dropping of this engine by General Motors is a small tragedy at General Motors as this was the same year that Ford introduced their 221 cubic inch V-8. Altho G.M. achieved the upper hand in production and sales over Ford it likely would have done even better if Pontiac had of been allowed to maintain and improve the Pontiac V-8. It was a superior engine to the Ford V-8 and I do not believe that it was dropped solely due to the Depression but to me more likely much of it was due to internal politics and jealousy at G.M./ Cadillac and possibly other divisions of G.M.

I would have to disagree with you here. If the Oakland V8 had been as good as you say, it would surely have sold in greater numbers than it did, in fact it likely would have had a far higher "survival rate" than it has (although a major factor in the survival of Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oakland, Oldsmobile and Viking cars of those years was greatly affected by the very poor durability of their composite (wood-framed with sheet steel skin) bodies, which rotted out from within very quickly. If one looks at the used car prices, and trade-in values of such cars in the early years of the 30's, they lost almost 75% of their purchase price within 3 years, while Ford Model A and V8 cars retained much more value as a used car for far longer. Even Chevrolet, while prone to the same wood-body structure survivability troubles carried on with a much higher survival rate. As an example, in 1965, when I was in the midst of my Model A Ford restoration passion, there were estimated to be 2.5 million Model A's still registered in the US, roughly 50% of the total production, 34 years after the last ones rolled off US assembly lines. The early Ford V8's carried on that tradition as well. The only other marque in the entire world in 1965, to have a comparable survival was Rolls-Royce. From my readings of antique car literature, beginning in my HS years (late 50's onward), the Oakland V8 (and the Oldsmobile/Viking engine as well) gained an early reputation for being rather troublesome engines, and not given to fuel economy either, which is an area in which the Ford flathead V8 excelled from day one. Neither the Oakland, nor the Olds-Viking V8 ever achieved serious sales success, even in the heady year of 1929, and they certainly trailed off very quickly, as the recession-turned-depression of 1929-33 seriously decimated mid-priced cars, certainly those which were considered to be either troublesome to own, or expensive to maintain. I believe that it is rather apparent that GM viewed those two V8's as money losers rather than money makers, and in corporations, just as with individuals, "If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep is your downfall".


The depression was a good excuse but I cannot believe it was the sole reason for the Pontiac V-8s demise. Jealousy at Cadillac must have been high due to the fact that their new engine was not designed at this time and they did not get the new mono-block engine into production until 1936. That was six years after the Anibal designed engine. Also remember that the tooling and the education of the works people at O-P were already achieved. Meanwhile Cadillac was producing the V-12s and V-16s; unneeded Show engines if ever one saw one.
G.M. did not need the Cadillac V-12s and V-16 engines as much as they should have had the Pontiac V-8 engine. The basic faults of the Pontiac V-8 with the 180- degree crank and the siamesed intakes would have been small and easily overcome in a short period of time as compared to the faults of the Cadillac V-8 engine even in 1930!

The Great Depression made it absolutely necessary for any auto manufacturer to look to the bottom line, and with a very, very sharp pencil indeed! I rather doubt that jealousy from Cadillac Motor Division had anything to do with the decision to discontinue the V8, either at Oakland or at Oldsmobile. In point of fact, by the late 1920's, the structure at GM (by historical account!) was that each division was to operate, in many ways, as if it was a separate business; of course, taking advantage of the same body company (Fisher), electrical components (Delco and AC), and so forth. In addition, GM divisions began sharing body shells by 1929 (Chevrolet and Pontiac, followed in the mid-thirties by Buick & Oldsmobile, and Buick & Cadillac (GM's famed, and highly successful A, B, C body programs!).

GM did not "need" Cadillac's V16 and V12, but Cadillac did! After all, Cadillac was hard at work, chasing Packard down for the position of being the World's largest luxury car manufacturer, which crown Packard had worn since the early teens. The V16 was developed over the years 1927-29 as the engine to power, smoothly and silently (and adequately as well!) the growing size and weight of high-end luxury cars, in which realm Cadillac sought to succeed, and as it proved by 1936, to dominate. In fact, by 1932, Cadillac was at least briefly considered by GM's board to be sent to the "chopping block", but wiser heads prevailed, and the authorization given to Cadillac management to continue the marque as GM's "signature marque", and we all know that this was successful indeed. The V16 (and its little brother--sharing the same internal componentry, BTW) was never considered as a high-volume engine, aimed as it was at the "carriage trade" of the very wealthy, but it still ranks as the highest volume production V16 automobile engine in the world, and is still prized today! In refinement (internally) and aesthetics (externally), the Cadillac V16 reigned supreme at what it was supposed to do: Power the very largest of the marque's cars, and do that with a smoothness and quietness inferior to none. The Cadillac V12, in its fairly short tenure, nearly equalled the production numbers of the Packard V12 (introduced at about the same time, and continued through 1939), so there must have been something to that engine as well, at least among luxury car buyers. As for Cadillac's pre-1936 V8, it had a lot going for it: Smoothness, durability, more than adequate horsepower and torque. Bear in mind, too, that Cadillac as a marque NEVER produced an inline 6 nor an inline 8, having gone from 1 cylinder to 2 cylinders, to 4 cylinders, and to the V8 in the first 12 years of the company (and later as a GM division). To understand the strength, and passenger car durability of the Cadillac multi-piece V8, I need only point you to Maurice D. Hendry's book "Cadillac, Standard Of The World". Take some time to read of the exploits of the Nairn brothers and their Baghdad-Damascus commercial run in the 1920's.
The 1936-48 Cadillac monobloc V8 was as much a step forward in reducing production costs and increasing the efficiency of the engine as anything else. Again, look at the "survival rate" of the older, multipiece Cadillac V8, you might be surprised. It was a luxury car engine, built for more than adequate highway performance rather than the race track, and in that role, it succeeded quite well, thank you!



It should have been very easy to fix the lack of the 180-degree manifold principle that Ford introduced in 1933 and the use of a 90-degree crankshaft that Ford 1932 and Cadillac used in 1925.

Cadillac used a forged 90-degree crankshaft, beginning in 1925 (and most successful automakers used forged 180-degree cranks in those years), which was a very expensive proposition. However, it was Ford that discovered that if one used the correct grade of steel for casting, a cast steel 90-degree crankshaft could be made--and old Henry seldom ever shared his technology with anyone. The Ford 221cid V8 used a cast steel crankshaft, with the metal developed in-house, and the casting techniques developed by Charles "Cast Iron Charlie" Sorensen. It took several years for other auto manufacturers to catch up to this.

The 600 series distributor continued to be used up until about 1938 by various engines so the addition of a vacuum advance mechanism also should not have been a problem. Just who used the vacuum advance first I do not know. I have not been able to find a date of actual usage or patent.

Ford, beginning in 1932, used a vacuum-advance distributor, on both the V8, and the Model B 4-cylinder engine (a much-improved Model A engine).


The fact that Pontiac had gone thru three years of manufacturing the V-8 and then the additional cost of designing a straight eight would seem to greatly decrease the strength of the argument that it was so much cheaper to manufacture a straight eight engine. One must never forget that tooling in those days was a big big factor in the first several years of manufacturing any engine. The V-8 engine was already made and the people producing the engine were already trained to produce parts and assemble the engine. Every thing was in place and production was rolling.
The argument that production of the straight 8 engine has to take into account that other manufacturers also were experiencing much lower sales in higher priced cars.

In 1931, by anyone's standards, to produce an inline engine was far less expensive than to produce any V-engine! After all, it was Ford who showed that a V8 (or even more cylinders!) could be produced nearly as cheaply as an inline. If it hadn't been for Henry Ford's legendary disdain of an inline 6 (from his early days with the very troublesome and unprofitable Model K 1906-1907), he might well have done an inline 6, but no--he had no use for an engine that "had more cylinders than a cow has teats" (his quote), and an 8 is nothing more than two 4's put together (very true, be it an inline 8 or V8!). Until the development of the Ford flathead V8, the production of a V8 was by necessity an expensive proposition.


Another factor in the switch to the straight 8 engine is that it took, in those days, about three years from the decision to produce a new engine to actual production/assemble line rolling. This means that the decision to make the straight eight was about 1929 just when the Depression started. The stock market crash was just the big visible factor in the public awareness of the oncoming depression? Some people did recognize the economic problem in advance but did the people a G.M.? If the G.M. management anticipated this, it must have been crystal ball time at G.M. in 1929.

Uhm, it seems to me that GM made the decision to drop the Oakland and Olds-Viking V8's after 1929, did they not? After all, 1929 was the absolute pinnacle of automobile production and sales in the US until 1955, when US auto production finally bested the record of 1929--look that up, it is fact!

For a straight-8 crank in one of my books and should come up with one today but Logic tells me, # 1. The str-8 crank has five mains; V-8 has four. Str. 8 crank has eight separate conrod journals; V-8 has four. Isn’t something fishy here? Both a V-8 and the str. 8 crank have to be 90-degrees don’t they? The more I think about this the more I think that this is just common knowledge bunk! We have been led to believe that a V-8 crank is more expensive but it just doesn’t seem to be true after some examination. It would be very interesting to know if the Buick crank weighed more than a Cadillac. I know those old 1936-52 Buick (320cubic inch) cranks were heavy, long and whippy compared to a Cadillac V-8 crank of the year’s 1936 t0 1948.

Yes, virtually all passenger car engines prior to the 1949 Cadillac and Oldsmobile V8's had two crankshaft "throws" between main bearings, INCLUDING all Ford Motor Company V8's. The famed Ford flathead had but three mains! As late as 1962, Chevrolet's 6's had but 4 mains, and AMC did not get a modern 7-main bearing inline 6 until 1971, the very last automaker to get that feature in the US. Yes, straight 8 crankshafts were heavy, and were prone to "twist", but again, those engines were built for smooth, not performance. That was their selling point, BTW, however, a Buick gave no ground to anyone, not even Cadillac, in terms of speed! And, both Buick and Packard were not only the last producers of straight 8 engines in the US, but their engines rank still today as the strongest, most durable of the type ever done, in fact ranking above most V8's of their era in terms of durability and reliability--however they were heavy all over, and not just the crank!

A peculiar thing in the horsepower rating of this engine between 1930 and 1932 is the fact that the horsepower was increased by only one horsepower after the compression ratio was increased by .2, but the rpm was reduced by 600. It would seem that if the horsepower were increased by such a small amount the rpm would be hardly affected, especially downwards. This engine seemed to be far down in its horsepower rating. It also had steel pistons while I believe many other engines had aluminum.

Chevrolet, in the same era, produced the "stovebolt" 6, which was also termed, deservedly, the "Cast Iron Wonder", due to its use of cast-iron pistons, which several other minor makes still used. In fact, Chevrolet did not adopt aluminum pistons until the early 1950's, and relied on splash lubrication as well until about the same time period.

There seems to be a “myth” about just how expensive it is to make a V-8 crankshaft as opposed to a straight eight crankshaft. After much thought I am beginning to believe that it is just as expensive, or more, to make a straight 8 crank as a V-8 crank! I am looking at this from a manufacturing standpoint (Money), as it doesn’t seem to stand up to even an incomplete examination.

[COLOR=darkred][b]True, a straight 8 crankshaft, since virtually ALL straight 8 engines were built with 90-degree cranks, is no less expensive than a 90-degree crank. However, it was the block casting that presented the problem. Henry Ford was willing to invest the money to conquer the foundry obstacles, GM was not. Plain and simple. Ford spent (by historical analysis) almost $100 million to do this, he had no board of directors, nor stockholders (beyond Clara, his wife, and Edsel and his wife, Eleanor) to answer to. GM, on the other hand, had thousands of stockholders who would have raised serious questions about such an investment.
[/COLOR

#5 Henk

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Posted 21 March 2004 - 13:40

Originally posted by marion5drsn
Just who and how the Synchronizer was developed is not known and I could not find anything about it. There is possibly a patent on it but I haven't the necessary apparatus to find it.

Once you know the number, every US patent is available on the US Patent & Trade Office web site, http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html, going all the way back to #1. To view text and drawings in their original image format, it is necessary to download a (free) TIFF-image viewer for web browsers, such as AlternaTIFF: http://www.alternatiff.com/

Alternatively, PDF files of US patents can be consulted through the ‘worldwide’ section of the European esp@cenet network: http://gb.espacenet.com/ . To view these files, you need to install the free Adobe Acrobat Reader program: http://www.adobe.com.../readstep2.html


Posted Image

The ‘synchronizer’ for the Oakland/Pontiac V-8 was designed by Caleb E. Summers. Description and drawings in US Patent #2108515 illustrate his ‘motor mounting’ device:

TIFF: http://patft.uspto.g...5&RS=PN/2108515
[click on "images", then use sections and arrows]

PDF: http://l2.espacenet.... 2108515A1 I


Benjamin H. Anibal’s V-8 design is outlined in US patent #1897783:

TIFF: http://patft.uspto.g...3&RS=PN/1897783

PDF: http://l2.espacenet.... 1897783A1 I


Interestingly, GM patent information reveals that Oakland experimented in the late 1920s with various designs for a compact short-stroke V-8 engine. Patent #1862723 indicates that, parallel to Anibals’s creation, a markedly different concept was followed by Caleb Summers:

TIFF: http://patft.uspto.g...3&RS=PN/1862723

PDF: http://l2.espacenet.... 1862723A1 I

#6 marion5drsn

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Posted 24 March 2004 - 17:06

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

# 1. The insert about Anibal does not claim that he invented the electric system for cars but that he developed it at Cadillac, which is true. The person who first wrote this likely should have clarified this but didn’t. The group that invented it was the DELCO.

# 2. Certainly the V-8 Ford of 1932 wasn’t as easy on gas mileage as it still had the old style manifold. No centrifugal advance only vacuum. The 24 stud heads with the low in the block water pumps were not to come until about 1937. And a lot of other things that I have forgotten about since 1946 when I had a 1933 coupe’. It was certainly not a low upkeep car until much later. The effective two-barrel carb didn’t come until November 1933 with the 180-degree manifold, I believe. Many changes came about in 1935 according to my books.
One only has to read pages 19 to about page 31 to find the problems of the Ford V-8 1932 t0 1934, “The Early Ford V-8 1932 –1938” by E.P. Francis and G. DeAngelis.
The Ford V-8 didn’t become a “real” engine until the 24-stud block in 1937 but it still had the exhaust pipe/overheating problem.

# 3. Cadillac didn’t need the V-12 and V-16 at all, as Packard was going down in the middle 30’s anyway V-12’s and V-16’s or not at Cadillac.

It is still my belief that Buick and Cadillac torpedoed the Pontiac V-8 as much or more than the Depression. The Depression was just a good excuse for them to force Pontiac to drop it before Pontiac could get the bugs ironed out just as they had to do at Ford! The Ford had plenty of bugs including the down thru the block center two Siamesed exhaust passages. They didn’t get rid of this until they brought out the ohv pushrod V-8 engine in the Lincoln 1952, Ford and Mercury 1954.

As for the decimation (10%?) of the upper priced cars Buick was hard hit as was Pontiac, but as I stated one would need a very complete graph of the car production at GM to really tell the slide almost to oblivion of these cars at that time. Remember this was at the time that Buick, 1931, was going to eight cylinders.

# 4. The early distributors rarely had both centrifugal and vacuum advance, this is just another example of time curing many ills as the vacuum advance was added to the Pontiac and other distributors around 1937. Just when Ford added the centrifugal advance I can’t say for sure but it seem to be around 1957,very late compared to others I might add! The distributor was another sore point in the early Fords V-8s.

# 5. The full impact of the Depression happened in the fall of 1929, Thursday October 29 to be exact. It actually started several years before and many people knew it was going to happen but did little to prevent it from happening. If this is true then they should have stopped Oakland from going to all that expense of developing the V-8 engine. There wasn’t much crystal ball reading at G.M. They should have seen that the V-12 and the V-16s were not in the financially practical area and were not needed to beat a small outfit like Packard. In any event Cadillac was not going to be beaten by any small outfit. Just how many people can tell the difference between a V-12 and a well-designed V-8 is problematical.

# 6. Just what were the problems at Pontiac that I haven’t listed as this is so long ago that I know of no book that I can find that lists them, the ones I mentioned are well known and anyone that reads the spec listed in the two books I have can seen will see them very quickly.
The two books I refer too are, “ The New OAKLAND EIGHT” FUNDEMENTALS. The other is the engine section of the OAKLAND INSTRUCTION BOOK. The shop manual is very difficult to get a good readable copy that I have been unable to find one in the last 3 months. I have had several offers but they are a little too shady to take a chance in spending that kind of money, this in view of the fact that I haven’t a chance of seeing the copy before laying down the long green. Have you seen the two books listed above?

It is only logical that the lower priced cars would have a much better used car price percentage wise as people who buy used cars are looking for lower prices cars. No one would buy a Cadillac for a used car if they were looking for a low priced car, would they?

Don’t you think that the Pontiac V-8 would have achieved a better success rate if it had of been a Buick? Same thing goes for Mercury!

The 90-degree shaft was not that expensive after it had been in production for several years and they had ironed out the production bugs. Remember Ford was going after a production rate of close to a million cars a years while Pontiac was going after just possibly 50.000 a year at the most.

It is also very likely that Ford could have used outside help to produce the block such as Ferro Foundry had done for several years. The mono block was not that new was it?
Go back to the Cadillac book you speak of page #239 first column,
1916 is the date they give. If mono blocks were so much more difficult to produce how did Ferro do it in 1916? It just may be that Ford people have produced a lot of propaganda about how difficult it was to produce mono blocks in 1932!

Ford didn’t get the cast iron crankshaft until December 1933 the original engine had a forged steel crank. Both types of shafts were used until 1936. After 1936 I don’t know which one prevailed.


As I stated before, it took at that time about 3 years from the time of actual decision to the rolling production line to produce an engine. This is also fact. How do you explain the decision to make a str. Eight so quick after the V-8 was just being produced? This all had to happen in the fall of 1929. As I stated before G.M.s Crystal Ball must have been working overtime and at full 100% efficiency, very doubtful.



M.L. Anderson, Mar. 24-2004

#7 dbw

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Posted 24 March 2004 - 17:51

i have to think that in 1965 as in 2004 that deusenberg has the largest percentage of cars mfg/cars extant....sure it was a low production car but so was rr compared to ford...

and it might be mentioned that ford components continued to serve man even after their demise as a complete vehicle...trailers,tent stakes,structural steel members,axle stands,kids play houses,not to mention the all important roll of landfill and underwater habitat for our native fish...

refresh my memory, when did cadillac make a 2-cyl car....?

#8 Aanderson

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Posted 25 March 2004 - 01:10

Originally posted by dbw
i have to think that in 1965 as in 2004 that deusenberg has the largest percentage of cars mfg/cars extant....sure it was a low production car but so was rr compared to ford...

and it might be mentioned that ford components continued to serve man even after their demise as a complete vehicle...trailers,tent stakes,structural steel members,axle stands,kids play houses,not to mention the all important roll of landfill and underwater habitat for our native fish...

refresh my memory, when did cadillac make a 2-cyl car....?


In 1965, not every Duesenberg in existance to that point had yet been found and identified. JL Elbert, in his pioneering book (Duesenberg, The Mightiest American Motorcar) published in 1951 pointed out that in the time he was researching his book, there seems to have existed a "tradition" among "old-money" wealthy, that often, they did not scrap, sell off, or trade in their "outdated" luxury rides, but pushed them off to the corners of the old carriage barn-cum-garages on their estates, to make room for newer cars. In point of fact on this, it's just been within the last 5 years, that a Duesenberg Model J convertible coupe was found, as a "barn car", still quite intact, quite original, save for a repaint many years ago (this car is now restored, with all of it's factory markings (Duesenberg's frame supplier, for example, hand-lettered the chassis serial number, along with their own manufacturing marks, in yellow paint by brush, on the factory-standard maroon paint that was the basic chassis color for a Model J, unless the customer specified otherwise), even the pencil marks on the wooden body framing were preserved!. Today, there are known to be approximately 230 Duesenberg Model J's existing, and titled. Many of these cars were literally resurrected from parts, a chassis from here, an engine from there, an original body (or a modern-made reproduction body (there are more Torpedo Phaetons in existance today that were built by Rollston and Walker Body Company (LaGrand), which original cars numbered just 5 (I believe there are 7 Torpedo Phaetons listed in the ACD membership records, only 1 or 2 are LaGrandes, the original Rollston having been totalled in a crash off of US-66 in the Painted Desert in Arizona in the late 1930's. Considering that no more than 488 Model J (including the 25 or so original, factory-built "SJ" versions) were built, as Model J engine numbers ran from J-100 to J-588, then I believe the Model A Ford record for survivors as of the mid-1960's still stands. One must remember, even in the middle 1960's thousands of Model A Fords were still in daily-driver service in the US (I had two by that time, a '29 Tudor Sedan, and a '28 Special Coupe).

As for Cadillac, I was mistaken, as Cadillac went directly from the one-cylinder engine, to a 4-cylinder inline, in 1909.

Art Anderson


#9 Aanderson

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Posted 25 March 2004 - 03:59

[QUOTE]Originally posted by marion5drsn
Tuesday, March 23, 2004

# 1. The insert about Anibal does not claim that he invented the electric system for cars but that he developed it at Cadillac, which is true. The person who first wrote this likely should have clarified this but didn’t. The group that invented it was the DELCO.

Anibal would have been one of the team to adapt DELCO's technology to the Cadillac. # 2. Certainly the V-8 Ford of 1932 wasn’t as easy on gas mileage as it still had the old style manifold. No centrifugal advance only vacuum. The 24 stud heads with the low in the block water pumps were not to come until about 1937. And a lot of other things that I have forgotten about since 1946 when I had a 1933 coupe’. It was certainly not a low upkeep car until much later. The effective two-barrel carb didn’t come until November 1933 with the 180-degree manifold, I believe. Many changes came about in 1935 according to my books.
One only has to read pages 19 to about page 31 to find the problems of the Ford V-8 1932 t0 1934, “The Early Ford V-8 1932 –1938” by E.P. Francis and G. DeAngelis.
The Ford V-8 didn’t become a “real” engine until the 24-stud block in 1937 but it still had the exhaust pipe/overheating problem.

Hmm! And all these years, I have thought of the Ford V8 as having been a great engine, once the intake breathing and distribution (one of the great contributions to V8 engine development has to have been the "over and under" equalized distribution of fuel/air of the '34 Ford V8 intake manifold!) Incidently, the solving of engine overheating was a problem for almost all mass-production manufacturers, into the late 1950's!
# 3. Cadillac didn’t need the V-12 and V-16 at all, as Packard was going down in the middle 30’s anyway V-12’s and V-16’s or not at Cadillac.

Sorry, but yes, in the minds of Cadillac management at the time (not possessed of the advantage of 20-20 hindsight vision--but dealing in the here and now realities of the late 20's, they did!) the large multi-cylinder engines were necessary, if they were to meet their goals of dominating the luxury car market-and that was their goal.
It is still my belief that Buick and Cadillac torpedoed the Pontiac V-8 as much or more than the Depression. The Depression was just a good excuse for them to force Pontiac to drop it before Pontiac could get the bugs ironed out just as they had to do at Ford! The Ford had plenty of bugs including the down thru the block center two Siamesed exhaust passages. They didn’t get rid of this until they brought out the ohv pushrod V-8 engine in the Lincoln 1952, Ford and Mercury 1954.

Cadillac seems to have had very little influence on the decision by Oakland and Oldsmobile Divisions to drop V8 engines. In fact, little known fact, Cadillac was in real danger of being closed down by 1930-31.
As for the decimation (10%?) of the upper priced cars Buick was hard hit as was Pontiac, but as I stated one would need a very complete graph of the car production at GM to really tell the slide almost to oblivion of these cars at that time. Remember this was at the time that Buick, 1931, was going to eight cylinders.

But, Buick, by the outset of the Depression, was by far the strongest GM division after Chevrolet, as they had been from the outset of GM, and continue to be so even today .

# 4. The early distributors rarely had both centrifugal and vacuum advance, this is just another example of time curing many ills as the vacuum advance was added to the Pontiac and other distributors around 1937. Just when Ford added the centrifugal advance I can’t say for sure but it seem to be around 1957,very late compared to others I might add! The distributor was another sore point in the early Fords V-8s.

But, like just about everything with the Ford V8, they worked.
# 5. The full impact of the Depression happened in the fall of 1929, Thursday October 29 to be exact. It actually started several years before and many people knew it was going to happen but did little to prevent it from happening. If this is true then they should have stopped Oakland from going to all that expense of developing the V-8 engine. There wasn’t much crystal ball reading at G.M. They should have seen that the V-12 and the V-16s were not in the financially practical area and were not needed to beat a small outfit like Packard. In any event Cadillac was not going to be beaten by any small outfit. Just how many people can tell the difference between a V-12 and a well-designed V-8 is problematical.

The full impact of the Depression was not felt until early 1931, check your history! Through 1930, the economy was in a deep, strong recession, it was not until 1931-32 that the Depression took hold. Just as in recent years, Oakland and Oldsmobile both were forced to look at the bottom line, not just overall, but look at each and every product. That they did. And the V8 engines simply had to go, at least for that time.

In 1927-29, when Cadillac was developing their V12 and V16, everything seemed rosy--prosperity, at least on the surface, was everywhere--wealthy people were lining up to buy the latest and greatest of automobiles. Luxury cars were getting ever larger and heavier--so the necessity of larger and more powerful engines was omnipresent. By 1929, every luxury (today we can read that "Classic Car") manufacturer was busy developing more powerful, and in most cases, smoother engines--Pierce Arrow, Peerless, Packard, Cadillac; and even Rolls Royce would join them within 3-4 years with the Phantom III. While a town car might be just fine with 100-125hp, as long as it was smooth and silent, there was at least a perceived demand for engines that would perform out on the then-developing highways!. In addition, while Duesenberg held a considerable edge in performance, with their advertised 265hp from their 420cid Model J engine, there was considerable prestige to be offered, and found (certainly in high society) from being able to say "my car is a V12, or a V16", and in that market, prestige is everything, even today!

# 6. Just what were the problems at Pontiac that I haven’t listed as this is so long ago that I know of no book that I can find that lists them, the ones I mentioned are well known and anyone that reads the spec listed in the two books I have can seen will see them very quickly.
The two books I refer too are, “ The New OAKLAND EIGHT” FUNDEMENTALS. The other is the engine section of the OAKLAND INSTRUCTION BOOK. The shop manual is very difficult to get a good readable copy that I have been unable to find one in the last 3 months. I have had several offers but they are a little too shady to take a chance in spending that kind of money, this in view of the fact that I haven’t a chance of seeing the copy before laying down the long green. Have you seen the two books listed above?

It is only logical that the lower priced cars would have a much better used car price percentage wise as people who buy used cars are looking for lower prices cars. No one would buy a Cadillac for a used car if they were looking for a low priced car, would they?

Ford, in the early 30's, had the distinct advantage of high resale value, not only over Chevrolet, and almost all other cars of higher retail price, but also over almost all other lower priced cars.

Don’t you think that the Pontiac V-8 would have achieved a better success rate if it had of been a Buick? Same thing goes for Mercury!

Nope. For starters, Buick had a very strong tradition of OHV engines only--Buick NEVER even seems to have considered a flathead. Mercury, on the other hand, was a success from the get-go, although in the mid-late 50's, the marque struggled .

The 90-degree shaft was not that expensive after it had been in production for several years and they had ironed out the production bugs. Remember Ford was going after a production rate of close to a million cars a years while Pontiac was going after just possibly 50.000 a year at the most.

There is a huge difference between potentially a million cars per model year, and 50,000. Volume means profit, back then, just as today.
It is also very likely that Ford could have used outside help to produce the block such as Ferro Foundry had done for several years. The mono block was not that new was it?
Go back to the Cadillac book you speak of page #239 first column,
1916 is the date they give. If mono blocks were so much more difficult to produce how did Ferro do it in 1916? It just may be that Ford people have produced a lot of propaganda about how difficult it was to produce mono blocks in 1932!

Ferro, along with Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Oakland, by 1932 had yet to produce the total amount of V8 engines that Henry Ford planned to make annually! Also, Ford worked with his existing staff, and having an innate distrust of "educated engineers", relied on his associates who, by virtue of their experience, some since 1903-04, to produce a workable V8 for mass-production. By any account, he was wildly successful, as it can be properly argued that the Ford flathead V8 was by most accounts the last successful automobile engine wholly engineered by men without any engineering degrees--read up on it!
Ford didn’t get the cast iron crankshaft until December 1933 the original engine had a forged steel crank. Both types of shafts were used until 1936. After 1936 I don’t know which one prevailed.

The cast steel crankshaft.


As I stated before, it took at that time about 3 years from the time of actual decision to the rolling production line to produce an engine. This is also fact. How do you explain the decision to make a str. Eight so quick after the V-8 was just being produced? This all had to happen in the fall of 1929. As I stated before G.M.s Crystal Ball must have been working overtime and at full 100% efficiency, very doubtful.

And, it did not take 3 full years to develop a straight 8 engine--after all, by 1930, inline engines were all the rage in Detroit, and straight-8 technology was already known, not only the theoretical stuff, but the casting technology, the machining technology (no different than a 4 or a 6), and the development of foundry patterns. A year at the very least, for a straight 8. After all, Nash, Hudson, and Studebaker, among others did their 8's at least that quickly.

[b]Art Anderson


#10 dbw

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Posted 25 March 2004 - 04:34

hey ...took a shot on the duesie...however..cadillac didn't exactly jump from the single to the four..

cadillac did start with a single cyl car...but introduced the model D [four cyl] in 1905 and kept the single to'08...[just long enough to win the dewar trophy]...[i had an '08 model T straight -side touring and a '13 5-pass touring...i still think the single cyl cadillac was the most honest,simple,hardworking and dependable brass era car ...and i'll even put one up against a brass T ford...come to think of it...any T ford.]

as they say."one chug per telephone pole".. :wave:

#11 Aanderson

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Posted 27 March 2004 - 15:12

Originally posted by dbw
hey ...took a shot on the duesie...however..cadillac didn't exactly jump from the single to the four..

cadillac did start with a single cyl car...but introduced the model D [four cyl] in 1905 and kept the single to'08...[just long enough to win the dewar trophy]...[i had an '08 model T straight -side touring and a '13 5-pass touring...i still think the single cyl cadillac was the most honest,simple,hardworking and dependable brass era car ...and i'll even put one up against a brass T ford...come to think of it...any T ford.]

as they say."one chug per telephone pole".. :wave:

Marion,

I'd not for a moment argue with your assessment of the one-cylinder Cadillac. And, of course, history points out that Cadillac was the cornerstone of the fledgling General Motors Corporation in their early days (all of WC Durant's manipulations and such notwithstanding!). And, of course, Henry M. Leland, by virtue of his passion for precision machining, cast a giant shadow across not just the automobile industry, but the entire industrial world of the first half of the 20th century.

Ford, on the other hand, had quite a different notion with regard to the automobile, seeing it as the way to lift millions out of their "rut" if you will, putting them not only on wheels, but in the process, creating, almost singlehandedly, it might seem, a huge industry.

Back to our discussion of the Oakland & Oldsmobile V8's, though. It is quite apparent that you have a sincere passion for these engines, and they are most certainly technically interesting, which I do recognize. However, I do believe that those two engines, for all their interesting ideas, did represent considerable failed technology, although the horizontal valve train idea they used did continue in actual production to the mid-1960's, by virtue of the Pierce-Arrow V12 (produced by Seagrave for fire apparatus from 1937-66) and the Auburn-Lycoming V12 (produced by American LaFrance for fire apparatus 1935-64). Also, Packard used pretty much the same valve train layout in their V12's through 1939-40. Where the two GM divisions failed was in the area of production costs.

An enbloc V8 casting is extremely complex, Ford using no less than 54 casting patterns to create each sand mold for the flathead, and then doing that by the hundreds of thousands annually. I believe it can be successfully argued that neither Oakland nor Oldsmobile ever seriously considered that sort of volume production. A major factor in the complexity of the Ford V8 block was, naturally, Henry Ford's insistance on simplicity, on the minimum number of parts to be used in the production engine. Early test examples of the Ford V8 used a multiple piece, cast iron exhaust system, exiting the exhaust gasses from the inward side of the cylinder banks, in the same manner as every other production V8 engine of the day (Cadillac's flathead V8, to the end of production in 1948, used no fewer than 5 manifold castings, each of them wonderfully complex in shape, and in their tradition, coated in black porcelain to the end of that era). While the early Ford V8's long, through-the-cooling-system exhaust passages certainly contributed to cooling problems, once Ford created relatively efficient water pumps mounted in the front of the block (1937-48 24-stud engines), along with wider, thinner and more efficient radiators, the Ford V8 was really little more prone to overheating than most other cars on the road. Also, the Ford V8, being laid out from the start around a nearly square bore/stroke, and the then-new insert main and rod journal bearings (nearly every other engine being built in 1932 still relied on "poured" bearings, wherein the babbit material was literally cast in place, in the bottom of the block, ends of the rods, and in the bearing caps), was, from the get-go, capable of much higher rpm, giving it an immediate power advantage.

As for fuel efficiency, the 32-33 Ford V8 did pretty well--averaged about 18-20mpg, even with the rather primitive intake manifold and single barrel carb. This engine was rated at 65hp, with the new Stromberg 2bb, and the over-under manifold introduced in 1934 bringing that rating up to 85hp (although many authorities believe the actual hp to have been closer to 100hp even then!).
Coupled with Ford's almost legendary emphasis on light weight, and those cars were performers.

Even Ford's so-called "buggy spring" suspension was in so many ways superior to other cars even in the 30's, giving those cars far better road manners than most passenger cars of the day, although a much firmer, stiffer ride, at a time when a lot of people were looking for cushiony, armchair ride. Ford cars, through 1940, simply out-handled, out-cornered virtually every US production car of the era. The transverse springing served to cut unsprung weight in the age of solid axles front and rear, as well, the transverse spring weighing less than a single parallel leaf spring. Even the torque tube was fairly thin material as well. Ford's front axle, by virtue of having tubular radius rods holding it in perfect caster alignment, weighed less than a comparable beam front axle on even a Chevrolet, for example. It is well-documented, in Ford historical literature that the company tested the new, 1935 Chevrolet Knee Action car (with DuBonnet front suspension) and found it quite wanting in the durability department, which of course so did Chevy buyers, leading Chevrolet to continue beam front axles in their junior series cars through 1940, finally going to SLA A-arm suspension across the line for 1941.

In short, the Ford flathead V8, by virtue of the sheer will of Henry Ford, and those surrounding him, became the extremely viable, strong engine that it did, produceable at low cost, was light in weight, more than adequately powerful, simple to maintain, and durable as hell. Couple that engine with a fairly lightweight car, of superior-for-the-day (and its purposes) handling, and it's little wonder that it succeeded. All that was needed was for someone (and it was both Oldsmobile and Cadillac!) to take that basic pattern, expand it to 5 main bearings, add a very reliable OHV valve train, and take it to the next level, which they both did for 1949. And, the rest, as they say, is history.

Art Anderson

#12 marion5drsn

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Posted 27 March 2004 - 20:10

Some people considered the floating connecting rod bearings as contributing to early excessive oil consumption and this wasn’t changed until somewhere around 1949 I believe. These were a unique development by someone but just whom and where it was invented and produced I haven’t been able to find in any of the books in my possession. Some people believed that they were capable of higher speeds and load capability than ordinary insert bearings. According to the book of E. P. Francis and G. De Angelis this feature was introduced on the very first engines in 1932.

The block main bearings were babbit up until September 1935 when they were changed to insert style.
The 24-stud head did not get fully changed over from the 21-stud block until June 1938.

It took Ford a full 6 years to really get the engine up to an acceptable level of reliability. This may indicate that the Pontiac needed till 1936 to achieve the same degree of reliability and power output.

The Stories and Myths about Henry designing the engine also as if it where just and overnight thing is refuted in the book in an around about way by telling how Henry only seemed to get involved after it was going slowly by his engineers. They seem to have built many engines and started in 1928. This also involved the Lincoln engine. It not being stated whether it was a V-8 or the V-12. All of this is in the book on page # 9. It was handed from the first group to a second set of engineers early in 1930. The first engine ran in February of 1931.

One of the statements that boggles the mind was the one on page 12 where it is a stated that, “ In fact our machining time wasn’t much more than it was on a four cylinder engine.”
The first cars were not assembled until March 1932.

M. L. Anderson

#13 marion5drsn

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Posted 01 June 2004 - 21:36

Oakland/Pontiac V-8 versus Buick 248 in.3” straight eight.

The small Buick 248 in.3 cubic inch is within three cubic inches of the O-P V-8.The first versions were 232 in.3 using various versions until 1937 when the 248” came out the bore and stroke were 3.094” Bore x 4.125” stroke. Previously the stroke was as small as 3.875” Obviously Buick was struggling with engine problems. As my books only go back to 1935 I find this puzzling to some degree. Using the 1937 version, which they kept until about 1950 using several different B & S’s until 1953 when they dropped all str. Eights.
Buick production dropped from 266,753 in 1926 Buicks high point to 40,620 in 1933 a drop of 84.77%, hardly what one would call a decimation (10%). Buick had been dropping far down from 1926 not 1929, these figures are from Automobile Quarterly 1987.
Cadillac at the same time dropped from 41,172 in 1928 to 6,736 in 1933, a drop of 83.64%, figures from Automobile Quarterly 1979. I haven’t any good accurate figures except from carnut, which I don’t trust, for Oakland/Pontiac. Carnuts figures only start from 1930 and it seems that the depression in car sales started in 1926. The stock market crash is the standard by with time is used to make the definitive time of the depression, but an examination of car sales seems to indicate it actually started much earlier.
M.L. Anderson

#14 Ray Bell

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Posted 02 June 2004 - 01:23

Could that market flattening have had something to do with the stagnation of the Model T... the absolute market leader?

Probably this is out on a limb, because there was plenty of other choices and that stagnation should have led to a widening of the buyers' focus rather than a total depletion of sales. But then, perhaps they were expecting something bigger from Henry than the Model A, and perhaps the difference in cost was too long a bridge to cross?

#15 marion5drsn

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Posted 02 June 2004 - 02:22

Ray; I was somewhat surprised when I looked this up as I don't remember seeing it before. But to to see it in its full perspective one would need the whole market graph. It may have been a bad dip at G.M. more than the complete market, I just don't know. We need someone who has a full graph as I don't have any thing close to that. I also looked thru a lot of the Internet but found no graph satisfactory to answer my question. M.L. Anderson

#16 Henk

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Posted 22 June 2004 - 21:56

[B]   GM production figures 1920-1941 

  (calendar years; US plants only)





	   Chevrolet  Oakland/   Olds./	Buick/	Cadillac/

				  Pontiac	Viking   Marquette  La Salle



1920	134,117	34,839	33,949	112,208	19,790

1921	 68,080	11,852	18,978	 80,122	11,130

1922	223,840	19,636	21,505	123,048	22,021

1923	454,386	35,847	34,721	200,759	22,009



1924	293,849	35,972	44,309	156,627	17,748

1925	481,267	44,642	42,701	196,863	22,542

1926	692,417   [COLOR=royalblue]133,604[/COLOR]	57,862	267,991	27,340

1927	940,277   188,168	54,888	254,350	34,811



1928  1,118,993   244,584	86,235	218,779	41,172

1929  1,259,434   211,054   101,579	190,662	36,698

1930	825,287	[COLOR=crimson]86,225[/COLOR]	49,886	121,816	22,559

1931	756,790	86,307	48,000	 91,485	15,012



1932	383,892	46,594	21,933	 45,356	 9,153

1933	607,973	[COLOR=royalblue]85,772[/COLOR]	36,357	 42,191	 6,736

1934	835,812	79,803	80,911	 78,327	11,468

1935  1,020,055   172,895   182,483	106,590	22,675



1936  1,228,816   180,115   186,324	179,279	28,741

1937  1,132,613   231,615   211,715	225,936	44,724

1938	655,771	99,211	94,225	175,369	28,297

1939	891,572   169,320   158,005	230,088	38,390



1940  1,135,826   249,380   213,907	310,823	40,206

1941  1,256,108   283,885   231,788	317,986	60,037

[/B]
1926. Introduction of the Pontiac Six.
In the GM hierarchy of the 1920s, Pontiac was placed in the lucrative price field between Chevrolet and Oldsmobile.

1930. Onset Great Depression; dramatic sales decline.

1933. Sales recovery.
The Pontiac and Chevrolet manufacturing facilities were combined, saving vast amounts of tooling costs through the use of shared body components.
The Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac sales organizations were temporarily united; dealers of each make were required to sell the other two as well.
Both Six and V-8 were replaced by a conventional 223.4 cubic inch (3 3/16 x 31/2) ‘601’ Straight Eight, another creation of Benjamin Anibal. Cheapest models were priced at $585, and with slogans like “sounds unbelievable but it’s true – there is a big straight 8 in the low price field” Pontiac managed to increase sales figures.

#17 VAR1016

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Posted 22 June 2004 - 22:17

This is a fascinating thread and I marvel at the depth of knowledge displayed.

Some of the facts are rather depressing to me however: I was amazed to read stories of post war car engines with splash lubrication and STEEL pistons!

Now I am sure that these engines worked and probably were very reliable but why did the makers insist on such primitive designs and paltry power outputs?

The fact that in England post-war many makers made crude side-valved engines is perhaps explained by England's dismal financial condition (and the hopeless governement) at that time.

I am certain that such considerations did not apply in the U.S. contemporaneously; America was very prosperous at that time.

PdeRL

#18 Arthur Anderson

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Posted 23 June 2004 - 01:20

Originally posted by VAR1016
This is a fascinating thread and I marvel at the depth of knowledge displayed.

Some of the facts are rather depressing to me however: I was amazed to read stories of post war car engines with splash lubrication and STEEL pistons!

Yes, in the US, Chevrolet used cast-iron pistons in their 216 and 235cid 6-cylinder engines from 1937-50, when the 235 engine got aluminum pistons (interesting to note here, that Chevrolet started building their 6 with aluminum pistons in 1929, but changed to cast iron with the all-new 6 in 1937). Chevy used splash lubrication for the bottom end of the 216/235 until the middle 1950's, when the remaining 235 "Blue Flame" 6-cylinder (the 216 was dropped at the end of the 1953 model year) finally received full pressure lubrication.

Now I am sure that these engines worked and probably were very reliable but why did the makers insist on such primitive designs and paltry power outputs?

[I]Well, for starters, at least with American passenger car engines, high rpms weren't the desired performance, but rather high compression ratios and a relatively low rpm range. It's really not the raw horsepower that moves a car, but rather the torque output, and those old engines could twist a driveshaft more than strongly enough to get down the road. Also, real fuel efficiency in the US was not an important (either personal, financial or political!) issue prior to the early 1970's, so large displacements and high torque ratings were what mattered. American roads of the day, and the cars that rode them, simply did not require a lot of up-and-down shifting once rolling, and high torque output at relatively low rpms made it very easy to "lug" those older engines. My father, for example, seldom ever used 2nd gear in any car he owned, being of the habit of accelerating to about 10mph in low, then shifting directly into 3rd gear. Our streets and highways back then were very much the "wide open spaces", with nothing like the traffic we see today. But, as for power output, I own a 1959 Chevrolet Biscayne sedan with the 235 6 and manual 3-spd transmission. This car will, even today, run 85mph or more out on the highway, and not take any inordinate time to get there either. Its BHP rating is 140, which is about what any V8 car prior to 1955 would put out, so it wasn't at all paltry in the horsepower department. [/I]

The fact that in England post-war many makers made crude side-valved engines is perhaps explained by England's dismal financial condition (and the hopeless governement) at that time.

Yes, discounting any political considerations, England was, by all historical documentation, as we say in the US, "Dead Broke" at VJ day in 1945, and small wonder, given the length and financial cost of the war. The US, of course, was highly prosperous immediately following the cessation of hostilities. However, the immediate postwar years were a "seller's market" for new cars in this country, which hadn't seen a new car produced from February 1942 until quite late in 1945, coupled with a relatively depressed new car production, annually, all through the 1930's. The result was, that by the fall of 1945, the average age of cars in the US was more than 10 years, in a day when ordinarily a car 5 years old was considered ready for the scrapheap. Remember, too, that since the 1920's, increasingly, the US has been a car-based society--certainly in the cities, where public-transportation systems struggled increasingly as ridership went to private automobiles. Not surprisingly, the auto companies here were pressed to provide new cars to the marketplace, even if they were little more than warmed over 1941-42 models. So, understandably, the old side-valve (L-head or flathead) engines, where they were the norm in a particular make, soldiered on for several more years. Additionally, through 1946, American automakers had to work with tight supplies of almost all raw materials (for example, American steel mills had converted wholesale in 1942 to the production of heavy plate steel and armor plate, and it took months after the war to re-convert to mild steel sheet for autobodies and the like (Ford, for example, built about 6 months worth of new cars with oak bumpers, they could not get the right gauge and temper of steel for steel bumpers, and replaced those with steel bumpers at no charge as they became available). Labor troubles were rampant, after all, the unions had had to work with existing pre-war contracts through the duration, and when postwar inflation came, so did strikes (General Motors endured a 6-month strike in late 1945-early 1946). The most telling problem was that wartime price restrictions stayed in place (rightly or wrongly), which forced car makers to sell their product at artificially low prices (in 1946, due to OPA regulations, Ford found themselves losing almost $100 per car, and seemingly nothing they could do about it, at least for several months). It was a chaotic time.

New engines were under development: The Cadillac and Oldsmobile OHV, undersquare V8's debuted in 1949. Chrysler worked from 1945 through 1950 to develop the famed Hemi V8 which hit the showrooms in 1951. Ford began work on OHV engines in 1949 (keep in mind, in 1946-48, Ford was financially the "sick man of Detroit's automakers" for many reasons too numerous to speak of here). Studebaker, then the largest of the independents, began work on their OHV V8 in 1948 as well. Pontiac began development of their OHV V8 in 1951, followed by Chevrolet in 1952 (although Chevy wound up starting all over, once their engineers had seen the upcoming Pontiac engine, and created the long-running small-block V8, which used a lot of the design innovations of the Pontiac 347cid engine). The other independents, Hudson, Kaiser, Nash and Willys simply lacked the foresight or the finances to delve into new engine development. Packard, by then the stodgy producer of solid, dependable, traditional cars for their solid, dependable, traditional (and stodgy) old-fashioned, old-money clientele, stayed with the flathead straight-eight until they had no choice, but then it was too little, too late. But, at any rate, in the US auto industry, the investment needed in new plant and equipment for new engines simply had to compete with the then-necessary annual restyling budget (style sold a lot of new cars back then), so the conversion simply took a long time to complete.


I am certain that such considerations did not apply in the U.S. contemporaneously; America was very prosperous at that time.

PdeRL


See above.

Art Anderson


#19 Arthur Anderson

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Posted 23 June 2004 - 06:27

Originally posted by marion5drsn
Ray; I was somewhat surprised when I looked this up as I don't remember seeing it before. But to to see it in its full perspective one would need the whole market graph. It may have been a bad dip at G.M. more than the complete market, I just don't know. We need someone who has a full graph as I don't have any thing close to that. I also looked thru a lot of the Internet but found no graph satisfactory to answer my question. M.L. Anderson


Marion,

Overall, US automobile production rose throughout the 1920's, after the short, deep post-WW1 depression of 1920-21, with the exception of 1927, when Ford, as is well-known, shut down all US assembly lines in mid June, not to resume anything resembling full production until the spring of 1928--the other makers simply were not able to fill that huge (million-plus cars), both by lack of capacity, and the very strong loyalty of Ford owners, they simply sat on their money waiting for the "New Ford Car".

US auto production and sales again rose in 1928, to an all-time record of about 6,000,000 cars in 1929, which record was not exceeded until 1955. As the recession brought on by the stock market crash of October 1929 developed into 1930, the first segment of the auto industry to feel the pinch (as a general rule) was the so-called 'mid-priced' car, which of course, Oldsmobile, Viking, Oakland and Pontiac were well sited in. The low-priced segment was affected, but not nearly as deeply, while the luxury car market, led by Packard and Cadillac felt hardly a ripple. However, the inability and inaction by the US Federal Reserve System (this was their first really serious challenge!), coupled with the passage of well-meant, but completely ill-timed tariff and maritime shipping laws passed by the US Congress and signed into law by President Hoover served to take a rather serious recession all the way into a crashing, grinding depression, which saw everything in the economy take a dump in 1931 & 1932. That of course, affected the entire automobile industry, although one stellar performance stands out: Auburn Automobile company experienced their best sales ever, up by a large margin over 1931, in 1932 (but that turned to dust in 1933!).

What did occur in automobiles was 1932! In the absolute depths of the depression, every automaker in the US (almost as if by conspiracy!) laid it all on the line--they, to a company, bet the ranch, on new models, and in several cases, all-new cars. So impressive was the combined effort of the entire industry, that antique and classic car collectors world-wide, and automotive historians as well, consider 1932 to have been the year when there simply wasn't a bad-looking car built.

One of Henry Ford's stated notions (documented by anecdote by several of his associates in later years!) was that he felt, honestly, that he, among all industrialists, could singlehandedly turn not only his company around, but indeed the entire national economy. He certainly understood the basic principle that by investing capital in new product, the plant and equipment to produce that new product, this was the way to spur economic development. A noble ambition, of course, and of course, the problems were far greater than he, at the time the world's wealthiest man by a long shot.

Art Anderson

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#20 Arthur Anderson

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Posted 23 June 2004 - 06:37

Originally posted by dbw
i have to think that in 1965 as in 2004 that deusenberg has the largest percentage of cars mfg/cars extant....sure it was a low production car but so was rr compared to ford...

and it might be mentioned that ford components continued to serve man even after their demise as a complete vehicle...trailers,tent stakes,structural steel members,axle stands,kids play houses,not to mention the all important roll of landfill and underwater habitat for our native fish...

refresh my memory, when did cadillac make a 2-cyl car....?


dbj,

By reported registrations, in 1965, slightly more than half of all Model A Fords produced in the US 1938-31 (slightly more than 5,000,000 Model A's were built stateside) were still registered in the US. Also, slightly more than half of all the Rolls-Royces produced to 1965 were still in use World-wide. However, Rolls produced more cars in any given year than Duesenberg produced from 1921-37--only about a thousand or so Duesenberg passenger cars were built--most of the Model A Duesenbergs having been junked as old-fashioned by the early 30's. As a result of the high scrappage of 1921-27 Duesenberg Model A & Model X cars, and the rather quick retirement of so many of the 480 (approximate production) Model J & SJ, only about 150 or so Model J's could be accounted for by 1965, the only ones to surface (other than the famed barn-car I referred to as having been discovered in the late 1990's) afterward were those that were pieced together from a chassis here, an engine there, and then having new bodywork done in replication of original coachwork. Such resurrections of cars, in my opinion, don't really count as "survivors".

I stand by my statement about the survival of Model A Fords and Rolls Royces, by the mid-1960's, as being pretty much accurate.

Art Anderson

#21 dbw

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Posted 23 June 2004 - 07:14

reported registrations do not actual cars make.....hard to imagine 2.5 million ford A's on the road in the mid sixties....VW beetles maybe....

#22 Catalina Park

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Posted 23 June 2004 - 09:35

My grandfather still had a Model A in the 60's :up:

#23 VAR1016

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Posted 23 June 2004 - 10:30

Thanks Art for your response to my post.

I had overlooked the obvious fact that the US economy was increasingly on a war footing - especially bearing in mind that some authorities imagined the war to last until late 1946 or even longer. This would mean little let-up in the placing of contracts for materiel and therefore as you say would have meant a greater delay in restoring peacetime production.

However, steel pistons! I imagined that these would have been obsolete by 1930!

Best

PdeRL

#24 Ray Bell

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Posted 23 June 2004 - 21:56

Originally posted by Arthur Anderson
.....US auto production and sales again rose in 1928, to an all-time record of about 6,000,000 cars in 1929, which record was not exceeded until 1955.....


True? I would never have imagined this...

I guess all those returning GIs bought twenties and thirties cars with their army severence pay? Truly, I would have expected that being starved of new cars for five or six years would have made a serious impact on the market in 48/49 when new models (ohv V8s etc) were coming out.

Goes to show... marketing is stronger than war!

#25 Arthur Anderson

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Posted 23 June 2004 - 23:49

Originally posted by Ray Bell


True? I would never have imagined this...

I guess all those returning GIs bought twenties and thirties cars with their army severence pay? Truly, I would have expected that being starved of new cars for five or six years would have made a serious impact on the market in 48/49 when new models (ohv V8s etc) were coming out.

Goes to show... marketing is stronger than war!


Ray,

Keep in mind the factors involved: First, as I mentioned, it wasn't until the middle of 1947 that the raw material supply truly began to meet the needs of civilian production, and that included every area of consumer goods that used, for example, sheet steel.

Second, while of course, the US Military mustered out something like 14-15 million men and women in 1945-47, a significant majority of those veterans were faced with either starting out their adult civilian lives, having been delayed due to their being drafted into the military right out of high school, or pulled from college classes; or having to "restart" their civilian lives after the interuption of wartime service. A high percentage of those men went on to take advantage of the "GI Bill" and get a college degree, which meant near-poverty level conditions (the GI Bill, while certainly an aid, did not provide nearly enough to keep one in beans & bacon, while they were attending school. I saw a lot of that as a small boy growing up next door to a major, Big Ten University in the late 1940's-early 1950's. A huge number of veterans married quickly right after the war (if they hadn't gotten married before shipping out overseas), and the "baby boom" was in full swing by 1947. So, it was a few years before these men reached the status of being able to afford a new car.

The first postwar OHV V8 engines came in two price classes: Cadillac at the upper end, a luxury car, and the Oldsmobile, just below that as a mid-priced car, and neither of them until the 1949 model year. Within two years, the Korean Conflict coupled with the hysteria of the Cold War dictated both price controls (once again 9 years after Pearl Harbor), as well as raw material restrictions due to the tremendous buildup in new military hardware. As a result, automakers found themselves, just as they had in 1940-41, competing once more for restricted availability of raw materials, steel, copper, brass, aluminum and chromium (chromium plating completely disappeared from automobile trim, except for high-wear parts like bumpers, and diecast trim parts which could only be chrome-plated--all other trim moldings became stainless steel virtually overnight across the industry). Every manufacturer was issued limitation orders regarding their production, most being limited to roughly 90% of what they had produced in 1949 & 1950. These restrictions were not lifted until early in 1953. New machine tools were practically rationed in 1951-52 as well, which factor restricted, for example, Ford's new OHV engine program--Ford did introduce a new OHV 6-cylinder and a new OHV V8 for Lincoln in 1952, but they simply were unable to stretch their limited access to new tooling for a Ford/Mercury OHV V8 until 1953, for introduction in the 1954 model year. Chrysler barely got in 'under the wire' in this time-frame, bringing the famed Hemi to market in 1951. GM, after their investment in plant and equipment for the Cadillac and Oldsmobile OHV high-compression V8's, seems to have concentrated their plant and tooling budgets on new assembly plants, along with greatly expanding their automatic transmission lines, having introduced the Dynaflow at Buick for 1949, the Powerglide at Chevrolet in 1950, a new, dual-range 4speed Hydramatic for Cadillac, Oldsmobile and the straight 8 Pontiac, then expanding those facilities to become the major automatic transmission vendor to the independents (Lincoln, Packard, Nash, and Hudson all bought Hydramatics for installation in their cars in those early 50's years). Again, it wasn't all that peaceful and smooth in the industry, or the marketplace by that time. One more factor: The postwar seller's market had more or less "dried up" by 1950, and buyers could be more choosy, after all, the initial crying need for new cars had been filled.

It really wasn't until about 1954-55, after the bulk of the returning WW-II GI's had gotten their delayed educations, gotten a family started, career track underway, and settled into their new homes, that new cars became the thing for them. And, that is when the record pace began, first with the great "sales race" between Ford and Chevrolet in 1954 (that drove all the independent makers to the financial "wall"), and then the general level of prosperity in 1955 that car sales finally surpassed the record year of 1929. And, it would not be until 1963 before the 1955 sales record would be eclipsed.

Art Anderson

#26 Arthur Anderson

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Posted 23 June 2004 - 23:55

Originally posted by dbw
reported registrations do not actual cars make.....hard to imagine 2.5 million ford A's on the road in the mid sixties....VW beetles maybe....


Except that people, then, as now, tend not to register (license) a car unless they are going to drive it. Also, while very old cars, such as the Model A Ford, certainly weren't in daily use in the big cities, they were still a very common sight in rural America even in the 1960's, driven largely by older people, many of whom had owned them since new.

As for 2.5 million VW Beetles, it wasn't until the late 1960's that VW was able to count a million Beetles, Type 2's, and Karmann Ghias sold in the US--their sales really didn't take off until the recession of 1958-59.

Art Anderson

#27 Ray Bell

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Posted 24 June 2004 - 00:48

Interesting stuff, Art... those periods of rationing and limitation I have never heard of before, nor would I have imagined them likely!

I recall that the A-model my father owned in 1949 was still floating around in the very early sixties... but there were very, very few cars from the twenties still on suburban roads in that era. I can't really speak for country areas because we only went there on holidays.

But what I do remember graphically is that the period 1962/3 saw a huge change in the age of the city parking lot. Cars over ten years old simply didn't seem to be around.

Of course, our whole market was so different... effectively, though we had a very high level of mobilisation and car ownership, our 'Model T' was the Holden, which came out in 1948.

This was the car that made the family car the norm in Australia. And by the end of the fifties the 2-car family was well on the way too.

Holden had sold a million cars by about 1962, into a marketplace that traditionally kept cars on the road longer than most around the world (1930s cars were still very much commonplace then) and in a country of only about 10,000,000 people. They had about 55% market share at their peak (1960) IIRC, so that means over two million cars sold to ten million people in about fourteen years... people who were still having three to five children in a family and many of whom still had pre-war cars.

#28 Arthur Anderson

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Posted 25 June 2004 - 00:02

Originally posted by Ray Bell
Interesting stuff, Art... those periods of rationing and limitation I have never heard of before, nor would I have imagined them likely!

I recall that the A-model my father owned in 1949 was still floating around in the very early sixties... but there were very, very few cars from the twenties still on suburban roads in that era. I can't really speak for country areas because we only went there on holidays.

But what I do remember graphically is that the period 1962/3 saw a huge change in the age of the city parking lot. Cars over ten years old simply didn't seem to be around.

Of course, our whole market was so different... effectively, though we had a very high level of mobilisation and car ownership, our 'Model T' was the Holden, which came out in 1948.

This was the car that made the family car the norm in Australia. And by the end of the fifties the 2-car family was well on the way too.

Holden had sold a million cars by about 1962, into a marketplace that traditionally kept cars on the road longer than most around the world (1930s cars were still very much commonplace then) and in a country of only about 10,000,000 people. They had about 55% market share at their peak (1960) IIRC, so that means over two million cars sold to ten million people in about fourteen years... people who were still having three to five children in a family and many of whom still had pre-war cars.


Ray,

I know that it is rather hard for those in other countries to understand, or perhaps believe, but virtually all civilian goods and commodities were strictly rationed in the US from early 1942 until the end of hostilities at the end of August 1945 (gasoline rationing ended in late August, predicated on the surrender of Japan).

All basic foods were rationed, meat, milk, butter, cheese, bread and sugar (the last because sugar came then, as now, largely from overseas--even Hawaii, and shipping was at a premium). Gasoline was severely rationed (the basic, C-sticker ration was just 3 gallons per week per car--but the stamps could be saved up for a trip requiring more), but this was due to the very limited availability of natural rubber, again an overseas commodity (it wasn't until 1944 that synthetic rubber became available for tiremaking, and at that, the vast bulk of production went to military vehicles and aircraft for the war effort). To aid in conserving both fuel and tires, a national speed limit of just 35mph was imposed for the duration (not all that big a hardship, as most roads, and a considerable segment of the cars available were't safe at much more than that speed). The use of virtually all metals was strictly limited, so supplies of household appliances were nearly non-existant. The auto industry was allowed to build out the remaining stocks of parts and components, before shutting down in February 1942 (the last 1942 car was a 1942 Oldsmobile, built in late February), and the auto plants converted to wartime military production. Civilian trucks, however, continued to be produced in limited quantities during the war however, first for war industries, and by late 1943, for farmers and tradesmen who could prove a need for a new vehicle. Chromium plating was prohibited for cars, trucks, virtually any civilian product that previously had used this trim. To enforce this restriction equally, even stainless steel trim on cars produced after the first week in December 1941 had to be painted out (the now rare "blackout era" 1942 cars).

All construction materials were limited to military or defense infrastructure construction only. Lumber, nails, concrete, and the like were not available to civilian construction, such as new homes. If one were to construct a new house, by federal regulation, the builder had to state that the house was being built from salvaged lumber, and in many cases, salvaged nails were being used in carpentry. Such mundane items as women's lipstick cases had to be made from plastic, or else do without (brass was in high demand for rifle cartridges, and the machinery that pressed out lipstick cases was put into service to make cartridge casings). Black & white camera film was simply unavailable through most of the war, as all the production was earmarked for the military (gun camera film, for example), but color film was readily available, if expensive.

When one considers the sheer volume of wartime military & defense production in the US during the war it's little wonder: From 1939-45, more than 6000 naval ships of all sizes and types were built, more than a quarter million aircraft, nearly 100,000 tanks and armored vehicles, 450,000 Jeeps (and nearly that many military trucks of all types). In addition, railroads added hundreds of new steam locomotives, several thousand new freight cars, and upgraded thousands of miles of track with new, heavier rail. Millions of rifles, machine guns, pistols were made, each one requiring a layer of chromium in the barrel to minimize bore wear. Millions of aircraft engines of all kinds were produced, each one requiring more chromium than any single car, for piston rings, cylinder bores, and as an alloy agent for the high-strength steels needed. Thus, it is easy to see why there was little available for any non-military or non-defense markets.

With all of this disruption, it isn't hard to understand the rather lengthy re-conversion to civilian production at the end of the war.

Art Anderson

#29 Ray Bell

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Posted 25 June 2004 - 00:47

We had similar, of course, though I don't know the full details...

I frequently hear my father talk of the fuel rationing days, and retelling the story of how he or his brother saw someone at the local airport pour out several gallons of aviation fuel on the ground because it 'might have had dust in it'... at a time when they could only get four gallons of fuel a month for their cars or something!

It continued long after the war, and the 1949 General Election was largely won on a promise of the rationing coming off.

But like America, it wasn't only petrol. Butter and other goods that were made in Australia even, but all oil was imported, so that was hit hardest. And you didn't get to work where you wanted, you had to take a job where the Government agency said you would be working.

I recall also the words of Phil Irving, explaining about the Vincent HRD motorcycle's design... he said it was fairly easy to get aluminium in England in those post-war days, but steel was at a premium... thus the frame was designed to use the alloy crankcase as an integral part.

We'd better not get into what conditions were like in Germany and France...

#30 dbw

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Posted 25 June 2004 - 04:51

hmmm....with all those ford T's and A's manufactured with high quality steel [albeit a minimum amount per vehicle] one can imagine where some of the raw materials came from for all those weapons of war...;)

#31 VAR1016

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Posted 26 June 2004 - 13:03

Originally posted by Ray Bell
...We'd better not get into what conditions were like in Germany and France...


Yes, I have often wondered how Ferrari managed to build his 12-cylinder racing cars in 1946/7.

Things improved quite quickly in France compared with England.

My parents visited France in 1947 - perhaps the balckest post-war year in England.

In Paris the shops were full of goods, plenty of people out on the streets. My Father enjoyed good fresh cream for the first time since 1939! He was always complaining about how things were here; after all we had rationing until 1954.

PdeRL

#32 Arthur Anderson

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Posted 27 June 2004 - 00:53

In retrospect, this has been one very interesting discussion, even though I have waxed verbose. It isn't often we get to discuss a technically interesting, if failed (for commercial reasons) an engine out of the past.

While certainly, the development of commercially viable, dependable V8 engines took several decades of the fledgling auto industry's history, and fully a half-century before they would dominate the US auto market. Over the years, first technical problems had to be overcome, and a number of "blind alley" concepts tried and discarded, but that is also true of just about every gasoline engine ever built.

Of course, political (wars) and economic climates (prosperity, depression, recovery, recession) had their effect on the development of not only engines, but also complete cars. The ever-present marketing decisions as well as public tastes played a much larger role than most of us truly realise as well.

Public taste and acceptance of new, seemingly radical ideas in automobiles has often been conservative, hence slow. Frankly, I do suspect that had any lesser personage (by popular opinion) than Henry Ford attempted to introduce a mass-produced V8 engine in the bottom of the depression, we'd have seen anecdotes about his ultimate failure. Of the two automakers of that era who had any interest in V-engines, and the size (clout) in the marketplace to introduce one, those being Ford and General Motors, Ford was by far and away the perceived strongman of the Industry, GM still having to live down a decade or more of lackluster cars below their increasingly prestigious Cadillac. Ford had a legendary durability and reliability, while Chevrolet was perceived by many as being a car offering an awful lot for a bargain-basement price, and suffered from serious durability issues (the worst being an awful reputation for broken rear axle shafts, due to their relying on a live, load-bearing rear axle system through 1929). Oakland and Oldsmobile were rather plodding makes, neither fish nor fowl, but certainly rather uninteresting, uninspired cars at the time. Buick was, of course, the star of GM at the time, with a strong reputation for toughness and durability, and also for a superior OHV engine (after all, Buick had the longest history of OHV engines, having never built anything but, since 1903). While the Jury was still out, there were very real fears within GM's Corporate management and their Board Room that Cadillac might not survive the deepening Depression, which had already taken down most all of their luxury car competitors, most of whom were among the industry's pioneers.

In the end, however, it was Ford who paved the way for real acceptance of V8 engines in the popular low and middle priced marketplace. And, while by the end of the 1940's, Chevrolet and Plymouth 6-cylinder engines did out-power the flathead V8 by at least a few horsepower, they were enough heavier cars that the performance wasn't any better, if at all equal. So, the new V8 engines from Cadillac and Oldsmobile, in 1949, did truly pave the way for the second generation of mass-produced V8's, based as they were on newly understood high-compression technology, but with proven valve trains, and very tough bottom ends. From the introduction of these two engines, the message to the rest of the industry was "lead, follow, or get out of the way". And, by 1960, all those makes which had failed, for whatever reason, to introduce a viable V8 engine in a timely fashion, were gone, they'd "gotten out of the way". Now, in these first years of the 21st Century, the V8 (only 25 years ago, the demise of the V8 was considered a given) has rebounded, with nearly every automaker of any size in the entire world offering their own, highly advanced V8's. Henry Leland (the guiding light of the first Cadillac V8, and Henry Ford, both have reason to smile, I'd think.

Art Anderson

#33 VAR1016

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Posted 27 June 2004 - 22:25

Arthur,

I would like to offer my thanks for your excellent, informative and thought-provoking posts.

Best wishes

PdeRL

#34 marion5drsn

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Posted 28 July 2004 - 19:16

Another view from the Buick people about the Pontiac versus Buick battle in the 1930s.

http://www.musclecar...ick/buick.shtml

I shall now light a fire under the Buick peoples heels! M.L. Anderson :rotfl:

#35 McGuire

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Posted 29 July 2004 - 03:12

One frequently overlooked reason the 1932 Ford was so revolutionary: except for a few largely unsatisfactory experiments like the Viking and Oakland/Pontiac, the Ford was of course the first V8 in the low-to-mid priced field.

Before that, the only way to get eight-cylinder power and smoothness was with a straight eight -- which was not only long, heavy, and relatively expensive (especially the block and crankshaft) but required a long, heavy, and relatively expensive chassis in which to install it as well. There was really only one good light straight eight built in America, the Hudson Terraplane, but its unit cost and margins were not competitive and Hudson could not sustain the car as an eight.

But the Ford V8 engine, on the other hand, could be built cheaply; and since the engine was barely longer than an inline four, it fit in what was essentially a four-cylinder chassis. The '32 Ford's chassis was not much more than an updated Model A. (Also, hot rodders quickly learned that the V8 was a nearly perfect fit in a Model A.) This not only set the unit cost very low for Ford; it also allowed nimbler handling and a better power-to-weight ratio than other cars in its class. They quickly and utterly took over stock car racing on both the ovals and on the road courses like Elgin as well.

The Ford V8 also established a significant styling trend that lives on to this day in the street-rodding movement. With their V8 engines, the 32-'48 Fords (the styling of which can be largely attributed to Edsel Ford and E.T. Gregorie) had a shorter hoodline than virtually anything else in their class. If you have ever been to a street rod event and noticed that the Fords somehow look just right, while the cars built from other makes don't quite capture the right look, proportions and stance of a "real" hot rod, that's why.

#36 McGuire

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Posted 29 July 2004 - 03:24

Originally posted by VAR1016
The fact that in England post-war many makers made crude side-valved engines is perhaps explained by England's dismal financial condition (and the hopeless governement) at that time.

I am certain that such considerations did not apply in the U.S. contemporaneously; America was very prosperous at that time.

PdeRL


It's not all that odd. Both Studebaker and Chrysler Corporation (Dodge, Plymouth) were still selling side-valve sixes in the USA in 1960, and in rather sizable volumes. Gasoline was dirt cheap so no one cared about efficiency, and a good percentage of the population never signed on for the horsepower wars.

#37 VAR1016

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Posted 29 July 2004 - 11:59

Originally posted by McGuire


It's not all that odd. Both Studebaker and Chrysler Corporation (Dodge, Plymouth) were still selling side-valve sixes in the USA in 1960, and in rather sizable volumes. Gasoline was dirt cheap so no one cared about efficiency, and a good percentage of the population never signed on for the horsepower wars.


Yes, Art has touched on this above.

the fact that these engines ran for enormous mileages is obviously due in part to the low stresses that pertained, but I imagine that blocks, valves etc., were probably made of good-quality materials.

PdeRL

#38 marion5drsn

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Posted 29 July 2004 - 17:56


Chevrolet down 1929 to 1932 30.5%
Oakland/Pontiac down 1928 to 1932 19.1%
Oldsmobile/Viking down 1929 to 1932 21.6%
Buick/Marquette down 1926 to 1933 15.7%
Cadillac/LaSalle down 1928 to 1933 16.4%
Average 20.6% of original figures .


The above pecentages show the beating that Buick/Cadillac was taking at
the hands of Olds/Viking and Oakland /Pontiac!

Edit 07-30-2004







#39 McGuire

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Posted 30 July 2004 - 22:09

Originally posted by marion5drsn

Chevrolet down 1929 to 1932 30.5%
Oakland/Pontiac down 1928 to 1932 19.1%
Oldsmobile/Viking down 1929 to 1932 21.6%
Buick/Marquette down 1926 to 1933 15.7%
Cadillac/LaSalle down 1928 to 1933 16.4%
Average 20.6%

The above pecentages show the beating that Buick/Cadillac was taking at
the hands of Olds/Viking and Oakland /Pontiac!

Edit 07-30-2004


Is this tongue-in cheek, or going straight over my head? :confused: If Oakland/Pontiac was down 19.1% and Olds/Viking down 21.6%, yet Buick/Marquette was only down 15.7%, wouldn't this tend to indicate that Buick was doing at least slightly better than the other two? In fact these figures would seem to imply that Buick did the best of all the GM divisions as the Great Depression did its worst...

...which is rather surprising to me due to the failure of the Marquette, and the awful reception Buick recieved from its homely "pregnant" restyling in '29. I have never considered these very good years for Buick, although the straight eight was introduced in 1931 -- a rather advanced engine for what it was. I had a '31 Model 66 Sport Coupe for a short time a few years ago and it was a very nice-driving car.

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#40 marion5drsn

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Posted 31 July 2004 - 16:04

McGuire; I know exactly what you mean I rewrote that thing about a half dozen times to illustrate that Buick and Cadillac were the worst and will try again to clarify it,my phrasing is poor, will try again!!! M.L. Anderson :)


EDIT; Added the statement about, "of the original figures ".


Edit # 2;
Chevrolet 30.5% or down 69.5%
Oak./Pontiac 19.1% or down 80.9%
Olds/Viking 21.6% or down 78.4%
Buick/Marq. 15.75 or down 84.3%
Cadillac/La Salle 16.4% or Down 83.6%


#41 Arthur Anderson

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Posted 31 July 2004 - 17:11

Originally posted by marion5drsn

Chevrolet down 1929 to 1932 30.5%
Oakland/Pontiac down 1928 to 1932 19.1%
Oldsmobile/Viking down 1929 to 1932 21.6%
Buick/Marquette down 1926 to 1933 15.7%
Cadillac/LaSalle down 1928 to 1933 16.4%
Average 20.6%

The above pecentages show the beating that Buick/Cadillac was taking at
the hands of Olds/Viking and Oakland /Pontiac!

Edit 07-30-2004






Marion,

Raw percentage data does not really tell the entire story, now does it? If it did, then Chevrolet should have gone down the toilet, with a 30% drop in sales. Also, for such a comparison to be valid, at least it should cover exactly the same time frame for each marque, which yours does not (the same years beginning and ending).

That said, now let's look at the years 1925-1929. Those were heady years in the US economy (agriculture excepted), truly the "Roaring Twenties". Pretty much everthing in the manufacturing and financial sections of economic activity was up, up almost daily. This certainly was true in the US auto industry. A point of fact here: For the first time since the early 20's, more new marques of cars were introduced, including some startup companies, than were going away. Cars got bigger, more powerful, more luxurious. However, by the 3rd quarter of 1929, cracks were already appearing in the economy. The growth charts were beginning to flatten out. And, more than anything else, the Stock Market Crash of October/November 1929 shoved a slowing growth pattern into a deepening recession. From that point, through early 1933, economic indicaters were down, almost daily, until the Depression reached its nadir in the second quarter of 1933.

And, the great "shake out" of automobile marques hit its full stride in these years. While of course, the low-priced, dominate makes of Ford and Chevrolet weathered this quite well, when one looks back, and of course, the high-end luxury makes (those we call Classic Cars today) fell like flies (most of the marques at the upper end were very small producers, actually), it was the mid-price cars that suffered the most.

GM and Ford (Ford by reason of having no stockholders to satisfy other than Henry, Clara, Edsel and Eleanor Ford), along with Chrysler, weathered the Depression years better than the rest of the industry combined. GM, by virtue of having extremely solid management, in the persons of the Fisher brothers, along with the sheer might of DuPont behind them (DuPont was the major stockholder in GM in those years) was by then perhaps the most solidly financed manufacturer in the industry outside of Ford.

A reading of the histories of GM in those years shows that the division management teams of Chevrolet (never really in any trouble!), Oakland (soon to evolve into Pontiac), Oldsmobile (soon to shed itself of the Viking brand), Buick, Cadillac, and the rapidly developing General Motors Truck division had to justify their very existence to General Motors management and board of directors. It went something like this, from my readings over the years: "Where are you now, and where do you see your division of the corporation going in say, 5 years?" (pretty sound question, requiring some real thought, and real vision BTW, and a technique that governs much of corporate planning and strategy today as well). Cadillac had perhaps the closest brush with oblivion within GM, but wiser, more forward-thinking heads soon realized that even the current depression conditions would not last forever, and that the corporation really did need a "signature division", a top-end line of cars, so Cadillac was spared, and of course, went on to become the dominant luxury car maker by 1940. Chevrolet was the "bread and butter" division, and had already bested Ford in head-to-head sales competition (something that was unthinkable to the public as late as 1926!) on several occasions. Buick, in the mid-price range, was GM's strongest make by far, and was considered the cornerstone of General Motors, having been the genesis of the corporation.

Enter now Harley Earl, who had managed to create a corporate styling division within the company. More than anything else, Earl turned out to be quite a marketing genius, in that he was able to persuade GM management to pursue a real commonality of design (and in the auto industry, then as now, styling plays perhaps as big a part in selling cars as engines and drivelines--people see the body styling, ride in car bodies, and give, generally, only a passing thought to the mechanicals underneath--as long as there is sufficient power and of course, reliability). Thus, Earl developed, and convinced GM management to adopt the now famed "A-B-C-D" body system, wherein the various divisions could be assigned body shells (and in the industry, the body shell is by far and away the most costly part of the equation, not the engine!), with the fenders, hood, grille and trim being unique to each make. Similarly, AC, Delco, Saginaw, Muncie Gear Works began supplying a standard range of transmissions, electrics, steering gears, and various other components to each division. Other than Cadillac, the rest of the divisions, except for Chevrolet went on a cost-control mission. If an engine was too high-priced to justify continued production, such as the Oakland and Viking V8's, compared to an inline engine of equivalent performance, then it simply had to go, and that was the case. If an engine lacked strong public acceptance (which in terms of sheer numbers produced, the Oakland and Viking V8's certainly were lacking in strong public acceptance), then it either had to gain that acceptance, and quickly, or it had to go.

Rightly, or wrongly, both the Oakland V8, and the Viking V8 simply had not the reputation which their makes' original inline engines enjoyed. The arguably lackluster styling of both Oakland and Oldsmobile didn't help all that much either, neither marque having a particularly appealing appearance when compared to other cars (perhaps because GM's Art & Color Section hadn't really gotten to work on those two marques until about 1930).

Along with the ABCD body system set up by Earl and GM's Fisher Body Division, GM's management simply repositioned each make by price level: Chevrolet at the low end, then Pontiac (they saw Oakland as unnecessary, as Oakland and Oldsmobile were virtually side-by side on the charts, one had to go away, Oakland was chosen to get the ax), then Oldsmobile, then Buick, and finally, Cadillac as the "senior" brand, price-wise. The theory was sound: Get a young person, just starting out, into a Chevy, and then as his affluence increased, into a Pontiac. As he moved up the ladder, to an Oldsmobile, then into a Buick, and if his income rose enough, into a Cadillac. Hence, "once a GM car owner, always a GM car owner". And, history also shows that through the late 1970's at least, this formula worked quite well for GM.

None of what I am saying here is meant to denigrate the technical interest in the Oakland/Viking V8's. They were certainly most interesting technically, and if they'd come along a few years earlier, and had there not been the Great Depression, they likely would have been the genesis, at least, of a long, uninterupted series of ever more powerful V8's from these two marques. But, that just was not to be. Sometimes, the twists and turns of fate just don't allow that. As for their "horizontal valve train" designs, history also shows this layout to have been ultimately a failed technology--every other engine to use such a layout, the Duesenberg "walking beam" 4's and 8's, Auburn's V12 (which outlasted all the rest, being produced into the early 1960's by American LaFrance), Packard's V12, and the Cord 810 V8 fell by the wayside in passenger car production by 1939. It was simply a valvetrain layout that couldn't pass muster over time.

When Oldsmobile (1949) and Pontiac (1955) did re-enter the V8 wars, the engines they designed and produced, while very conventional in layout, became a pair of legends in the automotive world, their performance legendary to this very day.

Art Anderson

#42 marion5drsn

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Posted 01 August 2004 - 22:54

Quote from Art;

If an engine was too high-priced to justify continued production, such as the Oakland and Viking V8's, compared to an inline engine of equivalent performance, then it simply had to go, and that was the case.


If that were the case then the V-12 and V-16 at Cadillac would have died a far earlier death than what they did, the fact that they didn't must make a certain statement about Cadillac and their position at GM! I wonder just how much money they lost for Cadillac. I haven't heard that they were anywhere near being money makers! M.L. Anderson

#43 Arthur Anderson

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Posted 02 August 2004 - 03:34

Originally posted by marion5drsn
Quote from Art;

If an engine was too high-priced to justify continued production, such as the Oakland and Viking V8's, compared to an inline engine of equivalent performance, then it simply had to go, and that was the case.


If that were the case then the V-12 and V-16 at Cadillac would have died a far earlier death than what they did, the fact that they didn't must make a certain statement about Cadillac and their position at GM! I wonder just how much money they lost for Cadillac. I haven't heard that they were anywhere near being money makers! M.L. Anderson


Marion,

Apples and oranges, I'm afraid! Look at the cars, and the price class & markets that Oakland/Viking and Cadillac were each competing in:

Oakland's V8 was what, somewhere around $1200, Viking about the same price, perhaps a bit less, while Cadillac was in the upper stratosphere price-wise, anywhere from the $3000 range for a V8, upwards of $5000-$6000 for either the V12 or the V16. Further, who made up the relative markets for each of these makes?

Oakland and Viking were aimed squarely at the upper middle-class market, those who wanted something more than say, a Ford, Chevy, Willys Whippet, or Plymouth, those being the primary low-priced cars of 1930, but were unable/unwilling to move into the upper mid-price range even (Buick country). Cadillac was running a fairly close second to Packard in the high-priced truly luxury car segment of the industry, positioned squarely for the discriminating buyer who could afford what he wanted. Point of fact here: While Fisher Body Division of GM, by 1930-31, was supplying Chevy, Oakland/Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick entirely, Cadillac used Fleetwood bodies exclusively, and Fleetwood were known for luxurious, high-quality coachbuilt bodywork. While the lesser GM makes concetrated on coupes, 2- and 4-door sedans, along with a fair number (albeit shrinking) of roadsters, cabriolets and phaetons, Cadillac's largest volume was in the Berline (very large sedan), Limousines (like the 4dr sedan, but built to be chauffeur-driven, and not a few town cars. Those cars were long, wide and heavy, hence the V12 & V16. GM was willing to make the bet that Cadillac would pull out of any slump brought on by economic conditions, and then would continue on in their ultimately successful goal of surpassing Packard, which in fact they did by the end of the 30's. What you may not realize is that Cadillac built the V12 and V16 cars to order, rather than by any assembly-line schedule, and did so from their very introduction in 1930-31. Further, they even built those two engines only to orders in hand, again no assembly pace to maintain. Even further, most of the basic engine castings were produced early on in the lives of both engines, and were machined, finished and assembled only as orders came in for them. It is significant, I believe, that the only true luxury car brands to survive the 1930's (Chrysler's Imperial having become very much a Buick-level car, price-wise, by 1939) were the three makes having in production a V12 or larger engine by 1930: Cadillac, Lincoln, and Packard. Peerless, Pierce-Arrow and Marmon did not introduce their V12's until 1931-32, and Auburn not until 1933, but all four of them failed (Peerless converted to a brewery--Carling Black Label Beer--in 1933, Marmon closed at the end of 1932, Auburn ceased production at the end of 1936, and Pierce was liquidated in 1938) due as much to their being quite small companies in an industry dominated by the Big Three and Studebaker.

Oakland and Viking had to contend with a much more highly competitive marketplace: The likes of Chrysler's lower priced Chrysler, DeSoto, the upper-level Dodge, Hudson (and their new Terraplane), Nash, REO (through 1933), Auburn, Hupp, Graham-Paige, along with a group of smaller 1920's-started independents. All the non-GM marques I have mentioned here, together, held approximately 1/2 of a badly impacted (and shrinking!) market for cars in the same price-class that Oakland, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Viking were trying to sell to.

Therefore, it does stand to sound corporate reason that if you have two potentially strong divisions who can make it through tough economic times, if only they can compete price-wise, fueled from behind with a tremendous advertising budget, then if there are costs that can be contained, even reduced, while still making cars that are competitive, perhaps a bit more so, than their competition, then the answer becomes a no-brainer. Had Alfred Sloan, the president of GM, along with his board of directors, itself headed up by Lawrence P. Fisher, and backed strongly (and also dominated) by the DuPont family, not done so, likely his head could have rolled, should he have more than one money-losing division for more than say, the year 1932. After all, Sloan, the Fishers and DuPonts had worked far too hard to lift GM above the level of a junk-bond outfit, which they were for most of their history from 1908 (the start of GM) through 1923-24, when the corporation faced, for at least the third time in their first twenty years, the very real possibility of bankruptcy, even liquidation. However, they were willing, and ultimately very wisely so, to carry Cadillac through the deepest years of the Depression, in their sincere belief that it would not last forever, and they did apply the same kinds of cost reductions at Cadillac in the years 1931-37 that they put into the mid-price divisions, but with Cadillac, that was more a matter of reduced body shell costs (the biggest part of the equation) while retaining the two engines that gave them real prestige, the two largest, most powerful engines available in a generally distributed car (unlike Duesenberg, whose price and extremely small dealer organization--only 6 sales branches in the entire country!--kept that marque necessarily small, only producing approximately 480 total chassis and engines 1929-37).

Also, by virtue of being GM's ultimate luxury car, Cadillac was a perfect place to try out new ideas, new engineering, such as their highly successful short-long arm IFS (in development fully a year or more ahead of Mercedes IFS, BTW), hydraulic valve tappets (introduced with the very first V16), recirculating ball steering gear (an invention of GM's Saginaw division), syncromesh transmission (also a Saginaw development). Cadillac was perfectly situated for these innovations, simply because they had a customer base who could readily accept new technologies such as these, and were willing to pay the necessarily higher unit price for them, far more easily than would those people much more greatly affected by the Depression. The only other significant automotive development of the 30's, that being the Hydramatic transmission was introduced by Oldsmobile in 1938, and that because Cadillac was unwilling to adopt such a radically new, and potentially troublesome transmission, not wanting to alienate any of their market, so Olds got the nod for this, Cadillac adopting it in 1940, after its basic reliability was proven on the highway.

By the way, I believe GM's annual reports show that Cadillac was profitable in 1930-31, albeit sinking badly, lost money in 1932-1933, just above breakeven in 1934, and never had to look back after that, being a quite profitable division by 1940 and beyond. Also, I believe the record shows that Oldsmobile and Oakland lost a lot of money in 1931 and 1932, only turning the corner about mid-1933. I am quite sure that one can research this, as GM's annual reports, balance sheets and income statements from the era are most definitely public information seeing as how GM was an open corporation (where for example, Ford was not--Ford's true financials were, in those years, known but to the Ford family, Internal Revenue, the various state revenue departments, and the Almighty).

Art

#44 McGuire

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Posted 02 August 2004 - 15:53

As the economy changes, so will the target demographic. There are two interesting aspects of the American car market which have consistently flummoxed the automakers in making sense of demographic trends:

1. The rich will always have money.

2. The real competition in the low-priced market is not other low-priced new cars, it's used upmarket cars.

There is a level of penury to which the working classes will not stoop in buying a new car. To this day, if it's too plain and mean, no matter how low the price you can't sell it, can't give it away. What good is a brand new car, if it only makes you look and feel like a piker? People will take the three-year old Buick instead, on EZ Credit. Every low-price carmaker who tried to come in under the low-priced three ran square into this: Willys, Bantam, 60-hp Ford, etc. These cars were not sold to the poor but to the cheap. Remember the Yugo?

In the Great Depression, the economy did not prevent the truly rich from purchasing new cars so much as the political climate. Instead of Duesenbergs they bought Cadillacs; instead of Cadillacs they bought Buicks. In lieu of a new Packard Town Car they bought a sedan (but kept on their driver). All this not to attract envy or undue attention, and in keeping with the country's more proletarian mood. If your wealth involved employiong numbers of people, flaunting it was not a good idea. Most people don't realize today how close we were to a socialist revolution.

#45 Arthur Anderson

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Posted 03 August 2004 - 00:54

Originally posted by McGuire
As the economy changes, so will the target demographic. There are two interesting aspects of the American car market which have consistently flummoxed the automakers in making sense of demographic trends:

1. The rich will always have money.

2. The real competition in the low-priced market is not other low-priced new cars, it's used upmarket cars.

There is a level of penury to which the working classes will not stoop in buying a new car. To this day, if it's too plain and mean, no matter how low the price you can't sell it, can't give it away. What good is a brand new car, if it only makes you look and feel like a piker? People will take the three-year old Buick instead, on EZ Credit. Every low-price carmaker who tried to come in under the low-priced three ran square into this: Willys, Bantam, 60-hp Ford, etc. These cars were not sold to the poor but to the cheap. Remember the Yugo?

In the Great Depression, the economy did not prevent the truly rich from purchasing new cars so much as the political climate. Instead of Duesenbergs they bought Cadillacs; instead of Cadillacs they bought Buicks. In lieu of a new Packard Town Car they bought a sedan (but kept on their driver). All this not to attract envy or undue attention, and in keeping with the country's more proletarian mood. If your wealth involved employiong numbers of people, flaunting it was not a good idea. Most people don't realize today how close we were to a socialist revolution.


McGuire,

Well stated, and very much on point. And, even today, most of what we would call 'sub-compact' cars in the marketplace as currently constituted simply cannot justify their existence based on sales and profitability for the manufacturers, at least in the US. Why then do they make and sell them? Simply put, they help average out the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) ratings.

The "climate" you refer to in the 1930's was not so much political as it was "social"--it suddenly, by 1931, became simply gauche to be seen "flaunting" one's wealth openly on the public street, certainly in the large industrial cities of the east and midwest. However, for a few notables, this "concern" over seeming to "lord it" over the local population of ordinary citizens went way, way back, witness that no less a powerhouse of personal wealth than Henry Ford himself, of course having the financial ability to have built any manner of car he might desire, drove Model T's exclusively until the A was introduced, and then continued to drive a 1929 Model A Coupe daily, back and forth from his Fairlane Estate in Dearborn to the Rouge Plant until he pretty much gave up driving about the time of his first stroke about 1940. Even after that, he continued to ride in Fords, his last car having been a 1942 2-door sedan. Both his personal '29 A Coupe and the '42 sedan can be seen to this day in the garage of Fairlane. Henry Leland, founder of Cadillac, drove a 1904 Cadillac coupe daily from the day it was new, until shortly before his death in the early 30's.

Even today, in many rural small towns (at least those that still have some locally-owned businesses still operating), it's just not socially sensible for an otherwise prospering, successful businessman to be seen driving even a Buick, lest his customers get the feeling that he's somehow making more money than he should (little wonder that small-town dealerships were either Ford or Chevrolet dominantly through the present day!).

If one can peruse microfilms of newspapers of the Depression years (and the Depression really ended by 1935, although its effects were still being felt, and could be documented as late as the middle 1960's), a surprising fact of used car values really shows: Very few makes of cars held their value at all! While a 2-year old Model A Ford might still hold 60% of its original sticker price (and in those days, sticker price was pretty much what one paid, little if any discounting of new cars, even in the depths of the Depression!), A Chevrolet, Plymouth, even the Whippet might still have 50%, the mid-priced cars truly suffered! I've seen reprints of used car ad's from a number of papers from 1932-33, showing even 1931 Oldsmobiles, Vikings, Oaklands offered for no more than say $300--cars that sold new for a thousand dollars or more when new. So, why not buy one of these "better cars" one might ask? Of course, people did buy them, but not nearly as many as sprung for new Fords, Chevies and Plymouths. However, in such a depressed economy, and with car buyers being largely much more mechanically savvy than even we are today, they went for cars that were easily serviced (and Fords definitely were that!--a Plymouth was rock-solid reliable, and Chevies were inexpensive to cure, even if you had to visit a garage), the Big Three low priced makes offered far better fuel mileage, even with gasoline at 10-cents a gallon--people were definitely in a mood to watch the the price and usage of gasoline. Also, the larger cars of the day were far, far harder on tires (which had perhaps 5000 miles of life in them before they either wore out or blew out). As late as 1934, the senior Packards of 1931-32, the really top-line Packards, could be had for a few hundred dollars, and that with cars sold new for upwards of $4500-$5000--talk about depreciation!

Another mentality of the Depression, which is perhaps what carried our parents and grandparents through the deprivations on the WW-II homefront was the attitude of "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." There is little wonder then, that on the eve of Pearl Harbor, the average age of cars in the US was about 8 years, and it shot way out to almost 14 years by VJ Day in 1945. And, at war's end, the bulk of the automobile inventory in use by the American people were Fords (several hundred thousand Model T's were still in daily use--along with an estimated 2/3 of the entire production run of Model A's), Chevrolets, primarily 1932 and later, and Plymouths & Dodges. The principle makes in the mid-price range, Buick, Oldsmobile (post 1932), Pontiac, Chrysler, DeSoto, Lincoln's V12 Zephyr, Hudson (along with Terraplane), Nash, Packard's 110 and 120 all were in plentiful supply--and these 1930's cars were well in evidence on most city streets well into the 1950's. Cadillacs and Packards from the advent of all-steel bodies in these marques also soldiered on well into the 1950's in daily use.

Of the so-called "cheap cars" to which you refer, the Ford V8-60 cars (and their follow-on, the 1941-42 4-cylinder Ford cars and pickups--yes, Ford offered 4-bangers in those two model years, powered by a variant of their extremely successful farm tractor engine, the 9/8N 4 cylinder) never, ever found wide acceptance, simply because those engines brought about a mere $15-$20 price advantage over the V8--coupled with noticably anemic performance!) However, the V8-60 found great acceptance overseas, being the powerplant of choice in the English Ford, the French Ford Vedette, the German Ford Koln, and into the mid-1960's in the French (Chrysler-owned)Simca.

Bantam, just as with it's predecessor, the American Austin (and Bantam was nothing more than the 1931-designed Austin bodies, with new fenders, hood and radiator shell/grille) simply never captured any enthusiasm, being truthfully far too small (2-place cars only) and too short on performance (about 45mph is all you could expect to get out of that tiny 4-cylinder, virtually a guarrantee of the possibility of becoming little more than a large bug-splatter on the front of any normal-sized car.

Willys-Overland, with the virtually simultaneous expiration of the Knight patents (which Willys-Overland owned and licensed to others, while building their own Willys-Knight luxury cars) and their almost terminal bankruptcy of 1932, did manage a considerable comeback with the development of the Willys 33 (the darling of the "Gasser Set in NHRA), which was powered by their very successful, and reasonably sturdy Whippet 4-cylinder engine (incidently, the Jeep CJ-2A flathead 4-cylinder engine is no more than an upgraded, hopped up Whippet engine, and when it was finally discontinued in the middle 1960's, held the distinction of being the very last engine in production with a directly traceable heritage back to the 1920's, 1927 I believe was the introduction year of the Whippet). W-O was moderately successful with the Model 33's successor, the Americar, 1937-42, which was a cheap car, but at least big enough to be functional as a family car. Crosley, on the other hand, was one of those things to come along, because Powell Crosley fervently believed in the idea "if only a micro car were built, people would line up to buy--worked only in the years 1947-50, Crosley gave up the ghost in 1952.

But, by and large, in the 30's (and well into the 1970's), used upscale cars really didn't compete all that directly with new low-priced makes--in general, people who bought them were either looking for a bargain in a larger car rather than take the hit of first-year depreciation, or after they were 3-4 years old, were bought by people who more often than not, simply could not be in the market for a new car, regardless of price class, if they were to have truly family transportation.

Art

#46 Ray Bell

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Posted 03 August 2004 - 15:07

Originally posted by Arthur Anderson
.....the French Ford Vedette, .....and into the mid-1960's in the French (Chrysler-owned) Simca.


Same car, it should be pointed out...

Simca took over Ford France and inherited the Vedette. That they were producing a Ford V8 powered car when Chrysler took over is an oddity paralleled by the same thing happening when Chrysler took over the Rootes Group.

#47 soubriquet

soubriquet
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Posted 04 August 2004 - 03:13

Thank you all for this fascinating thread.

A minor footnote about post WW2 rationing (from memory).

Due to steel shortages, and the relative availability of sheet aluminium post-war, Rover adopted the practice of pressing doors and bonnets from aluminium. This practice survived until the end of the 2000/3500 line of passenger cars, and continues with the Land Rover. Not sure about the current Range Rover.

Cheers
S

#48 Arthur Anderson

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Posted 05 August 2004 - 00:33

Originally posted by soubriquet
Thank you all for this fascinating thread.

A minor footnote about post WW2 rationing (from memory).

Due to steel shortages, and the relative availability of sheet aluminium post-war, Rover adopted the practice of pressing doors and bonnets from aluminium. This practice survived until the end of the 2000/3500 line of passenger cars, and continues with the Land Rover. Not sure about the current Range Rover.

Cheers
S


I've read that as well. Also, aluminum was chosen by Rover for weight reduction, which wasn't a bad idea. Of course, in the US, rationing, upon VJ-Day, was pretty much a thing of the past, although some few commodities remained rationed for several more months, but nothing that truly impacted industry, or ordinary life.

However, due to the wholesale conversion of US steel mills to war production of heavy plate (for ship's hulls and armor), also for heavy construction, the rolling of railroad rail, all the things needed to put the US on a wartime footing ASAP, common mild steel sheet was in very, very short supply for almost a full year after the cessation of hostilities. This had the serious effect of curbing auto production for most of the 1946 model year, and even such inconveniences as cars being shipped without steel bumpers, wood planks being substituted, with the buyer assured that as supplies of bumpers became available, they'd get them installed on their new cars.

Rubber remained in tight supply, as tire companies had converted to synthetic rubber for casing construction during the war, and while certainly able to meet military demands, were unable to provide enough new passenger car and civilian truck tires to truly meet the demand, so new cars and light commercial vehicles were shipped with the spare rim in place, but not the spare tire.

Art