Audacity of Air-Cooled Engine Featured at the Audrain Museum

Yahoo

19-03-2025

Air-cooled engines were once commonplace in the auto and moto industries. The most well-known were the Porsche flat six, VW flat four, Corvair, and numerous motorcycle engines, from BMW to Harley-Davidson. But ever-tightening emissions regulations have seen the cooling fins and large oil displacements all but disappear.
Well, a new exhibit at the Audrain Automobile Museum in Newport, Rhode Island, has not forgotten them, and examines the history and successes of cooling by air.
Below are just nine of the 16 cars and 12 motorcycles in the museum, from now until July 13. Make it a point to fire up the air-cooled Tatra V8 and drive down to Newport to see it. The address is 222 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, RI. You can call ahead at [phone]. Next up at the Audrain is STEAM Power: Automobile, Marine & Stationary, July 19 to November 9.In 1908 Cameron introduced four models of the 20-hp 4-cylinder. The one you see here carries four passengers and cost a whopping—for the time—$1,100. The gearbox was mounted on the rear axle, a feature for which Camerons were famous. In 1913 the first Cameron cars with water-cooled engines arrived. Apart from the position of the gearbox, the later Camerons were conventional cars.Highly regarded for comfort, durability, and technical innovation, Franklin was established in 1901 by John Wilkinson, a Cornell-educated engineer. Franklin gained fame as America's longest-running producer of air-cooled automobiles—and was also an early champion of the use of lightweight aluminum.
Franklin was a truly innovative automobile manufacturer. The company initiated a strong advertising campaign that promoted their high quality and lightweight vehicles. Their engineering was progressive and introduced many new features. Wilkinson used a wooden frame constructed of three-ply laminated ash. The benefits were two-fold; decreasing the weight of the vehicle and providing a better material to absorb shocks.
Franklin employed other advanced technologies, including an electric starter, electric choke, and a single unit which housed the speedometer, odometer, and time piece. Consequently, it was difficult for the company to maintain large profit margins. There were simply cheaper and easier ways to produce automobiles and Franklin chose the more innovative but complicated methods.Ferdinand and his team had set out to make a tractor for the people, or 'Volksschlepper' in German. The first Porsche Tractors were released in the early 1940s with a 12-hp, two-cylinder engine in V formation. Production evolved to include the smaller sized Junior, seen here, up to the 55-hp Master model. These tractors performed as well as they looked, and over 120,000 tractors were sold until production ended in the late 1950s.With the success of Volkswagen's air-cooled Beetle, American manufacturers, particularly General Motors, raced to produce a suitable competitor. Thus, in 1960, the rear-engine Chevrolet Corvair entered the market.
Was it a success? Within the first two days in showrooms, 26,000 Corvairs were sold. The name took the first part of Corvette and the last part of the Bel Air and put them together, aiming to bring a familiar yet exciting feel to the new model.The Lakewood station wagon was marketed as an economical solution for family travel with its easy-lift rear door, durable and easy-to-clean interior, and front and rear trunks for storage: The 1961 model boasted 68 cubic feet of total storage space. However, it paled when compared to the Ford Falcon, its main (and more successful) competitor, and the Lakewood only lasted two years.Tatra had been an early developer of streamlined, aerodynamic cars in the 1930s, and their postwar designs also followed the 'Tatra Concept,' which consisted of a central load-carrying tube and axles with independent swing axles in the front and rear.
This streamlined style allowed for more efficient fuel usage and handling. The first air-cooled model was the Tatra 11 in 1923, but the company used both water and air-cooled engines throughout their early history.
T603 production began in 1956 and lasted until 1975. The car was used mainly among senior members of the USSR's political and industrial establishments, evidenced by its plush, roomy rear seats and stock petrol-fueled heated seats in the front. The car was not generally offered for sale to the public.Its 2.5-liter, OHC V8 produced anywhere from 97-105 hp, and its top speed is estimated to be between 105 and 110 mph.The Fiat 500 Moretti Coupe rides on Fiat 500 mechanicals, put there by the Moretti Motor Company from 1961 to 1969. The oddball little coupe was actually designed by Giovanni Michelotti, who also penned cars for Ferrari, Lancia, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, BMW, and even Triumph.This Kremer K8 Spyder represents the swan song of Porsche's air-cooled racing origins, standing as one of the last endurance racecars that competed with an air-cooled Porsche engine.The K8 was an evolution of the Kremer's successful Group C Porsche 962-based CK6, which they had already adapted into an open prototype class CK7. The Kremer K8 won the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona.NMOTO is the Miami-based maker of what are called Nostalgia motorcycles. NMOTO's Nostalgia project is a one-of-a-kind endeavor to capture the ambition of the legendary 1934 BMW R7 Prototype—regarded by many as the Mona Lisa of motorcycles, according to the Audrain. It has been painstakingly designed to evoke the graceful lines of the singular R7 while being supremely capable for today's conditions. Produced by The Pierce Cycle Company, an offshoot of the Pierce Arrow Motor Car Company, makers of some of the finest cars of the era, the Pierce 4 revolutionized motorcycles in the US.
Founder Percy Pierce was intrigued by a Belgian made FN 4-cylinder motorcycle he purchased while in Europe. Before that, motorcycles made in the US were very basic adaptations of bicycle frames with either single- or two-cylinder engines essentially bolted to the frame offering little in comfort, safety, or reliability.
The FN used an inline 4-cylinder oriented front to back. Pierce commissioned a new engine for his bike, taking a page from the automotive technologies employed by his father's famous Pierce Arrow cars and designed the new engine to use side valves in what was known as a 'T-Head' configuration. The result was a smooth and reliable powerplant that even offered a compression release to facilitate starting.