CarPort

For all its popularity as an automobile powerplant, the internal combustion engine has one basic flaw: it develops its maximum power and torque in a relatively narrow band of engine speeds – and no power at all when it’s not rotating. Making the engine useful in a car requires multiple ratios of gears, belts or disks, each of which has drawbacks. Thus the automobile did not become a true consumer good until the advent of the modern automatic transmission.

Justus B. Entz had a solution to this problem as long ago as 1897. In that year he invented an electromagnetic transmission, in some ways similar to the drive mechanism used on today’s diesel-electric locomotives. An internal combustion engine drives a generator, and the electricity generated powers an electric motor to drive the wheels. Entz’s transmission was put into production in the Owen Magnetic, “The Car of a Thousand Speeds,” introduced at the New York Auto Show in January 1915. Built by the Baker, Rauch & Lang Co. from 1915-21, it was produced in factories at New York, Cleveland, Ohio, and Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.

The late Edwin Jameson, Sr., apparently thought this was a good idea, for in 1918 he purchased a new Owen Magnetic touring car. In fact, he thought it was such a good idea that he bought two: the tourer, seen here with Dale Wells (left) and Leroy Cole, both past presidents of the Society of Automotive Historians, and also a roadster. Dale and Leroy were entranced with the Floyd Clymer-style through-the-windshield spotlight with which this car is fitted. Driving an Owen was truly a one-foot adventure.

Both cars, which had remained in the Jameson family, were sold at a Bonhams and Butterfields auction at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Massachusetts, in May 2003. The tourer, knocked down at $36,000 (plus buyer’s premium), is now being restored by a British owner. The roadster, which sold for $24,000 plus-premium, went to an undisclosed location. Interestingly, the Entz transmission itself ended up in England after the demise of the Owen Magnetic. Ensign Motors, Ltd. of London adopted it for a model of their British Ensign car, sold as the Crown Magnetic (later Crown Ensign) from 1921-23 (photo thanks to Mike Worthington-Williams).

If you have puzzled your way through the Where’s Waldo books you know how Wayne Graefen felt. He had come to California to buy a Plymouth, and he was feeling like the child looking for Martin Handford’s cheeky little bespectacled gent. All he could see was a huge heap of ivy. In tribute to Walter P. Chrysler, he exclaimed “Where’s Walter?”

After an hour’s work, Wayne and his friend Press Kale, along with seller Cal Moxley, had the Plymouth out in daylight. Seeing, at long last, a rare 1932 PB convertible sedan, Wayne renewed his committment to buy it. Consummation merely awaited disposition of the Pontiac, Packard and GMC truck in front of it, as well as another Pontiac and two Cadillacs, so it could be moved.

The car has since emigrated to Wayne’s Texas home, and restoration awaits. Plymouth’s convertible sedan was not as popular (690 built) as Ford’s equivalent B400 (41 fours and 842 V8s), nor as well known today. It is not, however, as obscure as the similar 1930 Sun Sedan built both as a Hudson and an Essex.

Perhaps surprisingly, after too much time outdoors the Plymouth is in remarkably good shape, the seats almost comfortable for sitting. Wayne reports, however, that the ivy had obscured the car’s true gender; “Walter” has since been re-christened “Ivy la Deuce.”

Some of us consider old cars to be legitimate lawn sculpture, although spouses and neighbors tend to disagree. A few merchants, however, appreciate the attention-getting properties of cars, like this “clothes horse” Volvo in front of the Fat Hat Factory in Quechee, Vermont.

At first glance I considered this Volvo, the station wagon version of the PV544 series, to be a 545 (since the wagon equivalent of the earlier PV444 was a 445). As in all life, the truth is more complicated. According to “Professor Volvo” Duncan LaBay of the Round Fender Register, a harbor for fanciers of pre-perpendicular Volvos, this style, introduced in the autumn of 1960, is known as a P210 – for reasons known only to some long-gone Swedish product planners. The wagons were known as “Duetts” in Sweden, because of their dual purpose (passengers and cargo) nature.

Duncan says that some 95,000 Duetts of all descriptions were built, but only a few were imported to the US. The P210 was built until 1969, and the last ones to come to America, 1968-9, were imported privately.

The Fat Hat car is well known to the Round Fender crowd, having been restored in Sweden in the early 1980s and privately imported to Virginia. It has been serving display duty on Route 4 in Vermont for about fifteen years, and the rust planted by Vermont winters is quietly working its deadly magic.

Interestingly, the Duett, a better-cosseted example of which is in a New England collection, shares with the fiberglass-bodied P1900 Volvo Sport (rear view) the distinction of being the only postwar Volvo passenger cars with body-on-frame construction.

The last Ford flathead was made in 1953: all carfolks know that. But just because everyone knows it doesn’t make it true.

Some of you will know that the flathead endured in Canada for another season or two. Others will remember the Vedette, the French Ford (and later a Simca) that was the realization of Ford’s postwar “small car” originally intended for the USA. Looking like a miniature ’49 Mercury, the Vedette used a version of the “60 hp” V8 that was an optional Ford engine from 1937 to 1940 (and which had first appeared in Europe in 1935). A full-size flathead V8 powered Vedette’s sister car, the Vendôme, and also the sleek Facel-bodied Cométe.

The Vedette’s little V8 endured into 1963, and I once thought that was the end of the flathead. But this past February at Rétromobile, France’s premier old car event, in Paris, I came across this modern-looking flathead. Displayed on the stand of Club Vedette, it looks very martial, with all sorts of extra equipment and olive drab paint. Signs at the stand seemed to indicate it was manufactured as late as 1972.

Why would anyone manufacture Ford flatheads nearly twenty years after they were dropped in their primary market? One night, while trolling around on eBay I found the answer, in an auction titled “1965 Simca/Marmon French Military Army Truck.” The description said it had the “flathead V-8 (L-head) Ford engine -much revered and sought after by hot rod builders.” A little googling around on the internet taught me about the SUMB: Simca Unic Marmon Bocquet.

It seems that this Unimog-like creature, workhorse of the French army, was conceived by the Bocquet Company of Villiers-le-Bel, using Marmon-Herrington patents (Marmon-Herrington in the USA built four-wheel-drive Fords, remember?). Simca was given the production contracts, which were carried out at their Unic factories (SA Unic — Simca Industries) beginning in 1964. When Chrysler took over Simca in 1966, Unic was acquired by Fiat. Mike Stallwood of RR Motor Services Ltd. in England, dealer in military vehicles, confirms that SUMBs continued to use the Ford engine through the end of the 1960s. Thereafter, production continued with diesel power until the last SUMB was built around 1996 or 97. Mike says RR Services can still supply flathead engines, both new and reconditioned, from French army surplus.