46 replies to this topic

[f1steveuk]

Usual thing, a long and pleasant chat with someone, and a throw away question that got me thinking.

"Whats the first aero engined car?"

My mouth quickly engaged (without the backup of my brain) and I said Austro Daimler, Wolesley Viper, Hispano, but none with a great deal of conviction!!

I suspect around 1905 to 1910, but without my books I am just over taxing my brain. So who are the contenders for the first road car with an aero engine, and the first racing car with an aero engine??

[Sharman]

Steve
What about the first aeroplane with a car engine? Or were the first aero engines adaptations of existing car engines?
John

[Bonde]

Slightly OT, but IIRC some of Santos-Dumont's early dirigibles (pre-first aeroplane flights) were powered by DeDion-Bouton quadricycle engines...

I don't know who were the first "cross-breeders", but there are some interesting photos here: http://rides.webshot...247633023DKwisF

[D-Type]

I don't know about the first, but was the VW-engined Druine Turbulent the last car-engined aircraft to go into production?

[MrAerodynamicist]

One of the writers at Practical Performance Car has recently put a 27 litre Meteor engine in a Rover SD1
http://ppcmag.co.uk/...detail.asp?id=8
http://www.goodridge...rs-projects.htm

Somebody did something similar in the 70's, although currently the web page is down. [url="http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:M8QFrMpZcrkJ:<a%20href="http://www.superjohn.f9.co.uk/thebeast.htm+meteor+The+Beast&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a"%20target="_blank">www.superjohn.f9.co.uk/thebeast.htm+meteor+The+Beast&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a</a>"]google cache[/url]

[David Birchall]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by MrAerodynamicist
[B]One of the writers at Practical Performance Car has recently put a 27 litre Meteor engine in a Rover SD1
[

Am I the only one who thinks this guy may have missed the general idea....?

[m9a3r5i7o2n]

Hispano-Suiza engines were cut off of one bank and raced in a few cars in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties. But someone probably did it before that, someone must recall the movie Three Comrades.
M.L. Anderson

[Vitesse2]

According to WB, the first aero-engined car at Brooklands was 'Toodles V', which was a standard Sunbeam 25/30hp chassis fitted with an early version of the Sunbeam Mohawk engine. Built by Louis Coatalen in 1913 and used as a test-bed for the engine as it was far easier to get it to run for a long time in a car than in a plane!

Not sure about the earliest road cars, but Louis Zborowski's Chitty-Bang-Bang II of 1921 might be a contender. Lou drove it to Algeria and back .... all 18882cc of it!

[The Famous]

This car (don't know what it is) was at the ZIPPO U.S. Vintage Grand Prix in Watkins Glen, NY in September. I do know that the engine is a Curtiss OX 5 aircraft engine. Vintage 1913 to 1918. It ran surprisingly well!

[Peter Leversedge]

New Zealand has had a few locally built racing cars fitted with air plane engines, the Stanton Special [Warger Mauger] which for many years held the NZ Land Speed Record, the Lycoming Special [ Ralph Smith] and the"other " Lycoming Special [ late Duncan Rutherford ] plus a few other less known cars. The above cars where built in the 1950's
Question - Did a few sprint cars have Ranger air plane engines in them that raced in the US in the 1950's

[D-Type]

Wasn't the Blitzen Benz aero engine powered or the engine used for an aircraft or Zeppelin? Or is this the February signature justification?

[m9a3r5i7o2n]

Quote from; The Famous
This car (don't know what it is) was at the ZIPPO U.S. Vintage Grand Prix in Watkins Glen, NY in September. I do know that the engine is a Curtiss OX 5 aircraft engine. Vintage 1913 to 1918. It ran surprisingly well!

I love your description of the OX-5 engine, that this engine even ran at all is somewhat of a surprise. Just take a look at the valve gear. A big jumble of rocker arms and no oiling of the upper engine from the way it appears.
Just think, this company was the producer of the Curtiss D12. An engine that pushed the aircraft engine up another notch and frightened the English into producing the RR Merlin and likely some other engines as well. Compare it to the Hispano-Suiza. Curtis should have been ashamed of himself.

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Curtiss_OX-5

Of course 503 in³ (8.2 L) ought to move something. There were worse V8 engines no doubt but that this one was produced in such quantity is questionable.
M. L. Anderson

[soubriquet]

There's a Curtiss in the Honda museum at Motegi. I had no idea that this is an aircraft engine. The story is that as an apprentice, Soichiro helped build this car, sparking his interest in motor sport.

[The Famous]

I am a Volunteer at the Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, NY. The Curtiss OX-5 can operate about 20 minutes before you had to land and oil the Rocker Arms! In July we (the Museum) flew a Curtiss A-1 seaplane (reproduction that was made exactly to the oringinal drawings and photos) off of the lake at Hammondsport. I assist in setting valve adjustments on the engine before the flight.

I sent the Museum the photos of the Curtiss powered car in the Honda Museum. Thank you for posting the photos!!

I agree that the OX-5 engine is a little "scary", but it worked and powered the famous Curtiss Jenny. A similar version (also a V-8) powered Gelnn Curtiss's motorcycle that he set a speed record with in 1907 of 136 mph!! That was on Ormand Beach in Florida.


http://www.glennhcur...org/index.shtml

[Alan Cox]

Originally posted by The Famous

This car (don't know what it is) was at the ZIPPO U.S. Vintage Grand Prix in Watkins Glen, NY in September. I do know that the engine is a Curtiss OX 5 aircraft engine. Vintage 1913 to 1918. It ran surprisingly well!

It's the Franziss Special, discussed here:

http://forums.atlasf...hlight=franziss

[WHITE]

Was not the Torpedo Tucker fitted with a helicopter engine ?

[m9a3r5i7o2n]

Soubriquet:

What year did Honda make this car? It certainly shows a lot of detail machining and quality in doing this, love that lightened axle. I wonder just how he came about this engine. Hispano-Suiza licensed one of the Japanese manufactures to do their engine during WW-1. Of course it was even larger than the Curtiss engines at 718 cubic inches (11.77 Liters). This was the reason that Americans removed one bank of cylinders. 358 cubic inches ought to have been enough in any case.

One would likely have to go back to the era 1899 to about 1910 to come up with an engine that was first in both automobiles and aircraft as some of them were used in boats, aircraft and cars. Anything to get the power to weight ratio to a proper number.

Clement Ader claimed to have engines in cars, aircraft and who knows what else, all the way from single cylinder to V-8s. Of course he claimed a lot of other things also and it being impossible to sift fact from fiction we will never know for sure.
Much of the old “facts” being written in French as many of the old cars were produced in France and sold in other countries even under different names.

M. L. Anderson

[soubriquet]

m9a3r5i7o2n:

It's been two years, so I can't recall the date. I do recall that it was during his apprenticship, which puts it between 1922 and 1928. I think the car may have been a US ckd import which they assembled and ran. The valvegear would certainly not have escaped the notice of the youthful genius; lessons would have been learned there.

Motegi is well worth a visit if you're in Tokyo and have a spare day. A fabulous collection of bikes, including many, I was very happy to see, of Mike Hailwood's.

[Gerr]

soubriquet , m9a3r5i7o2n:


Some info about Honda's Mitchell-Curtiss in a thread tiltled "can you name this mystery race?"

[dbw]

if you were fortunate you had a miller roller rocker conversion on your ox5...it added a few more minutes to your [engines] life.

[soubriquet]

Thanks Gerr

This is the thread.

http://forums.autosp...ht=mystery race

quoting dbw: "c.1915 mitchell chassis powered by a curtiss OX-5 V8 aero engine[1917-18]."

fwiw, this is what Wikipedia has to say:

"By 1922 Honda was working in an auto shop in Tokyo called Art Shokai. Initially he had done menial tasks, but more and more he became a trusted mechanic. He worked on the racing car Art Daimler, then the famous machine born from the marriage of a Curtiss aircraft engine and an American Mitchell chassis. The need to make parts for this monster taught him things that would be invaluable later in life.

When Shinichi Sakibahara raced the car for the first time at Tsurumi, and won the Chairman's Trophy, the young man riding alongside as his mechanic was Soichiro Honda. He was 17 years old."

As there seems to be some interest, but no photos of this car, I'll put some more up. The first shows the car labelled as 1924. As Honda was born in November 1906, he would have been 17 through most of 1924.

[f1steveuk]

I'm sensing the answer is going to be around 1908-1910 for the first aero engined car then!!?

[Rosemayer]

The Tucker did infact have a helocopter engine.



http://en.wikipedia....48_Tucker_Sedan

[m9a3r5i7o2n]

Soubriquet;

Beautiful pictures of this car at Item 21! I will have to study this for several days.
Yours, M. L. Anderson

[AMICALEMANS]

The 2 Howmet in 1968 at Le Mans ran with an helicopter gas turbine !

Dit you remember a car in the late 70 : it was a Capri II engined with a Spitfire engine Merlin RR.
I cant find picture...

[Bonde]

...and, of course, the Lotus 56 ran with a slightly modified Pratt&Whitney turboshaft aeroplane engine...

[Rosemayer]

Ray Bell should bring up the Lycoming special

[Doug Nye]

Don't forget that - going by Mauro Forghieri's recollection - the Ferrari flat-12 engine - at least in its 3-litre guise - was part intended to provide the basis for a buried-in-the-wing aero engine for an American company named Franklin.

DCN

[m9a3r5i7o2n]

Quote from f1steveuk; I’m sensing the answer is going to be around 1908-1910 for the first aero engine car then?

I would say this is more likely very true and probably from France. But meanwhile we can have a lot fun with it!
M. L. Anderson

[dbw]

i do believe this has been discussed here before....i, for one, am an advocate of huge chain driven aero engined cars...and there have been a few..both actually old and newly built..[the ox5 powered single seat [!!] hillclimb car in the uk and a bigger two man car with a hall-scott 4 cyl built recently in california come to mind].

back to the subject, i think harry miller's golden submarine had an aero engine as a basis for a powerplant.... actual airplanes have been designed around model t, a and v8 fords as well as vee dubs and chevy v8s...don't i recall a v12 jag powered 7/8 scale spitfire???

[Piston Broke]

The Lycoming Special was mentioned. For reasons I do not recall I have a reference to this car in the form of an account of the 1960 Australian GP

Transcript from Autosport 5 August 1960, Australian Grand Prix.

"Sensation of the day was the appearance of one Ernest Tadgell with what had
once been the Formula 2 Lotus based Sabakat Special. Instead of the Sabakat's
original 1.5 litre Climax engine, Mr. Tadgell had chosen to install the 8,150
c.c. air-cooled opposed-six Lycoming power unit from a crashed Crop-duster
aircraft. Brave Ernie piloted his hideous pink-painted monstrosity around in a
surprising 2 mins. 18.9 secs (73m.p.h.). Lathered in sweat, despite the
lateness of the hour and the crispness of the Queensland winter evening. He
reported 120 m.p.h. at something less said the critics. "She'll do," muttered
Emie through chattering teeth.

Preceding the Grand Prix was a three lap "warmer-upper", of which Tadgell and
the Lycoming-Sabakat saw but half a tour and two hair-raising turns. On the
third, Castrol Comer, the garish monster slid, hit the straw bales, flipped,
tossed Ernie on his back in the infield, flipped again and exploded with a loud
roar. An ambulance carried Tadgell away with two broken ribs and a bent nose.
His car was still burning an hour later. Up front, Mildren broke a halfshaft on
the line, Davison won by 20 yards from Stillwell, and young Victorian-resident
Englishman John Leighton (Cooper-Climax) was third. Later, from the ambulance,
Ernest Tadgell announced his retirement from racing."

I know also that Bruce McLaren drove a Lycoming Special at Wigram in the 1960 Lady Wigram Trophy , IIRC as a last minute replacement for his Cooper, which had suffered an engine failure in the morning morning warm up / practice. Bruce simply transferred tyres from his Cooper and drove the car to 4th I think. He may also have taken off the mudguards, as the car was the Ralph Watson car which was fully road legal and registered.

[Bonde]

...on the subject of Australian aero-engined specials, there is of course also the remarkable DeHavilland Gypsy Minor (IIRC) powered Stanton Special, which is still around...

[David McKinney]

Originally posted by Bonde
...on the subject of Australian aero-engined specials, there is of course also the remarkable DeHavilland Gypsy Minor (IIRC) powered Stanton Special, which is still around...

Was there an Australian Stanton Special as well as the New Zealand one?

[Bonde]

...ooops...I apologize for recalling incorrectly the nationality of Stanton...

[McGuire]

Originally posted by f1steveuk
I'm sensing the answer is going to be around 1908-1910 for the first aero engined car then!!?

I think the question itself may be problematical as there were "aero engines" running in automobiles before the airplane was invented. What do I mean by that seemingly nonsensical statement?

Well, for example the Manly-Balzer engine was developed and tested in a road vehicle before it was installed in the (unsuccessful) Langley aircraft, which predates the Wright Brothers' flight. Also, there are several Curtiss OX-engined race cars mentioned here. But Glenn Curtiss developed the engine in road carriages (propeller-driven) before they were ever used in airships or aircraft, then to be called "aircraft engines" and be installed in race cars at some later point. When the aircraft for which it was contracted did not pan out, in 1907 Curtiss installed his V8 in a motorcycle and for several years was the fastest man on land.

So the answer to the question really depends on what we are willing to call an "aero engine." I tend to take the view that before around 1910 or so there were no "aero engines" or "auto engines," just engines. When the aircraft became a commercial proposition (1910-12) then there were what we can recognize as "aero engines."

[McGuire]

In 1916 Rea Lentz won the Pikes Peak Hill Climb in the Romano Demon Special, which was reportedly powered by a 125-hp Curtiss aircraft engine (apparently -- little is known about the car.) Not much seems to be known about the driver either. Contemporary reports state he was only 16 years old...the name Rea Lentz also shows up on a few board track box scores around that time. There also seems to have been a driver on the Velie factory touring race team by the same name. He seems to have been from the Tacoma, Washington area.

The car was also described "the lightest and smallest" in the field in contemporary reports, which seems incongruous for an aero-engine special until we note that the Curtiss OX-5 V8 weighed less than 400 lbs. This is reputed to be the Romano Demon Special:

[Tim Murray]

In the UK Duncan Pittaway owns a couple of aero-engined racing cars. One of them is a Monarch fitted with a Curtiss OX5 which he believes to be the car that won the 1915 Pikes Peak in the hands of 'Edwardo Ramano'. Could it be that Mr Romano/Ramano built a new car for the 1916 event, or has Duncan maybe got his wires crossed a little? Duncan's Monarch looks nothing like the car in McGuire's photo.

[f1steveuk]

Originally posted by Bonde
...and, of course, the Lotus 56 ran with a slightly modified Pratt&Whitney turboshaft aeroplane engine...

An easy one to forget. Slightly OT then, what engine did the Rover "JET 1" have in it??

[Bonde]

OTTOMH, the Rover turboshaft engines were all bespoke automotive units - although some components may have stemed from aero engines.

[Allan Lupton]

Originally posted by Tim Murray
In the UK Duncan Pittaway owns a couple of aero-engined racing cars. One of them is a Monarch fitted with a Curtiss OX5 which he believes to be the car that won the 1915 Pikes Peak in the hands of 'Edwardo Ramano'. Could it be that Mr Romano/Ramano built a new car for the 1916 event, or has Duncan maybe got his wires crossed a little? Duncan's Monarch looks nothing like the car in McGuire's photo.

Oh dear, pity the poor historian.
IIRC the Monarch/Curtiss is a bitsa, built in the early 1990s from Beaulieu Autojumble gleanings (or equivalent) by Mark Walker

[Tim Murray]

Oh dear, memory failure again. When I checked my source (an article Duncan wrote for the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust magazine) I found that he describes it as follows:

While the car is by no means a genuine Edwardian racing car, it is very authentic in every respect and replicates closely the Pikes Peak winning car of 1915.

Apologies to all, especially Duncan.

[2Bob]

Bonde .... on the subject of Australian aero-engined specials, there is of course also the remarkable DeHavilland Gypsy Minor (IIRC) powered Stanton Special, which is still around...

This one??





The Webers (and air filters) look a bit out of place!

Mallala this last weekend.

[Simpson RX1]

Originally posted by AMICALEMANS
The 2 Howmet in 1968 at Le Mans ran with an helicopter gas turbine !

Dit you remember a car in the late 70 : it was a Capri II engined with a Spitfire engine Merlin RR.
I cant find picture...

The Capri was the first incarnation of John Dodd's 'The Beast' which was destroyed in a garage fire, he then salvaged the engine and stuck it in a custom made body which looked like a giant Reliant Scimitar with a RR grille on the front (and has been mentioned in this thread before).

It was frequently seen on the prowl in darkest Kent where John had an auto transmission refurbing company; it was also famously involved in a court case when Rolls Royce objected to the unauthorised use of the Spirit of Ecstacy. It apparently does still exist in a lock-up somewhere in England, and may well see the light of day again.

There was also another car around the same time which was a GRP replica of a MK1 Capri with an extra 14" added into the front wings, which I thought was designed to have an aero engine fitted, but it turned up at last year's Bromley Pageant with a big inch American V8 road engine instead.

[D-Type]

Originally posted by 2Bob
Bonde .... on the subject of Australian aero-engined specials, there is of course also the remarkable DeHavilland Gypsy Minor (IIRC) powered Stanton Special, which is still around...

This one??





The Webers (and air filters) look a bit out of place!

Mallala this last weekend.

What chassis did it have? When was it constructed? Could it be a partial inspiration for Neville Shute's Gipsy-Lotus that I enquired about some time ago?

[David McKinney]

Before anyone gets too carried away - the car depicted is certainly not the Stanton Special

[GeoffE]

Is this it then?

[David McKinney]

That's more like it