Thread: Great failures.

Originally Posted by cuppabillytea

My brother is in Toowoomba. a fair way from you. He's way too docile for that savage a bite. I'll ask him what he reckons.

Yeah my father refuses to pay that sort of money too ( and he has a DS23 5spd EFI with factory A/C in bits to restore).

https://www.franzose.de/en/Citroen-D...zuege-Saetze-/

It's a sad time when it's cheaper to import the fully made trims for less than you could buy the leather pelts for locally.

seeya,
Shane L.

Preston TUCKER made a very advanced car but got "squashed" by bigger makers who in turn adopted a lot of his ideas for their own cars later.

"The Tucker 48 (named after its model year) was an advanced automobile conceived by Preston Tucker and briefly produced in Chicago in 1948. Only 51 cars were made before the company folded on March 3, 1949.

Some components and features of the car were innovative and ahead of their time.
*The most recognizable feature of the Tucker '48, a directional third headlight (known as the "Cyclops Eye"), would activate at steering angles of greater than 10 degrees to light the car's path around corners. At the time, 17 states had laws against cars having more than two headlights. Tucker fabricated a cover for the cyclops center light for use in these states.

*The car had a rear engine and rear-wheel drive.
*A perimeter frame surrounded the vehicle for crash protection, as well as a roll bar integrated into the roof.
*The steering box was behind the front axle to protect the driver in a front-end accident.
*The instrument panel and all controls were within easy reach of the steering wheel, and the dashboard was padded for safety.
*The windshield was made of shatter-proof glass and designed to pop out in a collision to protect occupants.
*The car's parking brake had a separate key so it could be locked in place to prevent theft.
*The doors extended into the roof, to ease entry and exit.
Preston Tucker held a patent for a collapsible steering column design.
*A glove box was added to the front door panels instead of the more conventional location in the dashboard to provide space for the ?crash chamber? that the Tucker is now famous for. This is a padded area ahead of the passenger seat, free from obstructions, providing the front seat passengers an area to protect themselves in the event of an accident.
*The engine and transmission were mounted on a separate subframe which was secured with only six bolts. The entire drive train could thus be lowered and removed from the car in minutes. Tucker envisioned loaner engines being quickly swapped in for service in just 30 minutes.


Each Tucker built differed somewhat from the previous car, as each car built was basically a ?prototype? where design features and engineering concepts were tried, improved, or discarded throughout the production cycle.

The door releases on the interior of the Tucker came from the Lincoln Zephyr. The steering columns used in the Tucker were donated by Ford and are from the 1941 Lincoln.

Tucker envisioned several other innovations that were later abandoned.
Magnesium wheels,
disc brakes,
fuel injection,
self-sealing tubeless tires,
and a direct-drive torque converter transmission were all evaluated or tested, but were dropped on the final prototype due to cost, engineering complexity, and lack of time to develop.

(Imagine how more advanced we'd all have been had this stuff commenced earlier! )

Tucker initially tried to develop an innovative engine, with help from Ben Parsons, who at that time was the owner and president of the Fuelcharger Corporation, and would later be Tucker's VP of engineering.

It was a 589 cubic inches (9.65 L) flat-6 cylinder with hemispherical combustion chambers, fuel injection, and overhead valves operated by oil pressure rather than a camshaft. An oil pressure distributor was mounted in line with the ignition distributor and delivered appropriately timed direct oil pressure to open each valve at proper intervals. The oil pressure fed to each valve was "timed" by intake and exhaust eccentrics and measured by spring-loaded plungers.
Built of aluminum and magnesium castings with steel-plated cylinder linings, the huge pistons required up to 60 volts to turn over the starter, nearly 3 times the power of a normal starter.
This unique engine was designed to idle at 100 rpm and cruise at 250-1200 rpm through the use of direct-drive torque converters on each driving wheel instead of a transmission.
It was designed to produce almost 200 HP and 450 ft-lbs of torque at only 1800 RPM. When cruising at 60 mph it would only turn at approximately 1000 rpm.

These features would have been auto industry firsts in 1948, but as engine development proceeded, problems appeared. Six prototypes of the 589 engine were built, but the engine was installed only in the test chassis and the first prototype.
(wikipedia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker...ible_prototype

tucker automobile images - Bing

A very innovative low slung car was being planned, its front guards turned with the wheels.
Bing Images
(replica)

A must in this thread, and far more relevant in this country than the Tucker is the Hartnett.

Produced in Melbourne in the early 1950s, about 100 being delivered to customers. Failure of the company is claimed to have been due to breach of contract by Comeng, apparently correctly as several years later Hartnett won a court case against them on this basis, although being awarded far less than he asked for. At the time, the treatment of Hartnett by the Federal Government was compared to that of GM (The government bankrolled GM, but refused assistance to Hartnett and through government owned Comeng frustrated Hartnett's attempt to compete with GM. Hartnett had been the MD of GMH and responsible for bringing the first Holden to production, but was replaced by GM just before production started because he was considered "too Australian" (he was actually English!). Hartnett was also director of wartime production for the Commonwealth during WW2.)

The vehicle was a version of the Gregoire (designed by the man responsible in the 1920s for the Tracta joint used in early 80" Landrovers), and featured innovations such as aluminium chassis and body, four wheel independent suspension, front wheel drive, and claimed a top speed of 60mph from its horizontally opposed aircooled engine, and 70mpg, thanks to a mass of about 400kg, while being a 4/5 seat sedan.

It was a close relative of the Panhard Dyna.

John

How about the Mazda Roadpacer?

Attachment 96538

Would have to have been a hit in Japan
Regards Philip A

Originally Posted by PhilipA

How about the Mazda Roadpacer?

Attachment 96538

Would have to have been a hit in Japan
Regards Philip A

You have got to be kidding me!

I want one.

Originally Posted by Mick_Marsh

You have got to be kidding me!

I want one.

You may be in luck.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDa-h3RcTkk[/ame]

Originally Posted by PhilipA

How about the Mazda Roadpacer?

Attachment 96538

Would have to have been a hit in Japan
Regards Philip A

The lovechild of an RX 4 and HJ Prem.

Originally Posted by DoubleChevron

Nice. It's a shame the leather interior bits are so expensive. We have two here that could be retrimmed. To do it in leather would be > $5000

Those central heating ducts in the front undertray look very familiar. I wonder where I have seen that car before

seeya,
Shane L.

Hi Shane.
Sorry to take so long on this. The car that I showed you was 3,500.00 for door trims and seats. Covered but not re cushioned as that was not necessary.
Cheers Billy.