Thread: From the ground up?

Originally Posted by Wraithe

....., but I didnt realise the V8 is another buick... There has been a lot of claims that engines originated from Buick and other without any proof... As for the early Rover engines, I dont think many manufacturers pre 1950, shared engines, most made there own, so Rover did well building there long stroke little engines, but that was a standard for low revs, high torque engines, in the day....

One thing people forget, if you want speed on road, you have to give up something....

According to Graham Robson in "The Landrover, workhorse of the world", quoting the MD of Rover, who visited Mercury Marine in the USA to try and persuade them to buy Rover gas turbines as marine engines. That didn't work, but he did sell them some 2.25 diesels for marine conversion. It was while looking at the conversions of these that he spotted a Buick V8, also awaiting conversion, that took his fancy. On finding GM had just ceased production, he started negotiations with GM that ended in buying the design and tooling, plus taking several workers who had been involved in production.

In the first fifty years or more of car manufacturing, most companies designed and built their own engines, although there was a substantial market for engines supplied by specialist engine manufacturers. Some examples - Continental in the USA supplied engines for a lot of US manufacturers plus Morris in the UK (not to mention even some Australian manufacturers in the twenties. In the UK, White & Poppe and Hotchkiss also supplied engines to Morris - the former being taken over by Dennis in 1919 or 20, and Hotchkiss being absorbed by Morris in 1925. A few still exist, e.g. Coventry Climax, and diesels have been much more commonly bought in, although usually for trucks rather than cars (e.g. Detroit, Cummins, Perkins).

By the 1930s though, most surviving manufacturers were building their own engines, this being a major point of differentiation, although there were a few small manufacturers who bought engines from a competitor, usually for a very different type - e.g. Morgan, Allard. But once legal restrictions started to be imposed on emissions and later fuel economy, the cost of developing an engine to meet these rules (and tooling up for it) became so high that only the largest companies could afford it, and this also made them more willing to share. So shared engines became much more common.

The typical long stroke engines from the UK were designed that way mainly because the tax regime was based on "Rated Horsepower", which had little to do with actual power, but was calculated using a formula that did not include stroke, but only bore and number of cylinders. So the obvious thing to do was to build engines using a long stroke to reduce tax. While these engines did, as a result, tend to be flexible and with a good torque curve, this was not a design criterion.

That torque made Gardiner's a great Marine engines too. The tractive effort delivered with so little fuss means they are easier to live with day in and day out for weeks.
Interestingly they were much favoured by Trevor Haworth to power Captain Cook Cruises.