New Car Designs Point the Way
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DESIGN trends that may have an application to commercial vehicles are represented by two new private cart; writes P. A. C. Brockington. An outstanding engine design feature of the new Ford Anglia car is the use of a hollow cast-iron crankshaft giving great rigidity. The importance of this feature is directly related to the use of a. very short stroke (1.906 in.), which is less than 60 per cent, of the bore (3.187 in.).
An acknowledged disadvantage of employing a short stroke is that it increases the length of the crankshaft for a given engine capacity, which tends to introduce torsional instability. Obviously the crankshaft of the new Anglia engine has been designed to overcome this problem and may well represent a development of importance to the automotive industry generally.
Another new car, the American Chevrolet Corvair, is powered by a 2.3-litre air-cooled flat-six engine, having separate cylinders, mounted behind the rear axle. This unit indicates a notable advance in reducing the noise of air-cooled engines and shows that such an engine can be produced at a reasonable cost. Despite the success of the German Volkswagen equipped with a rear-mounted air-cooled engine, many British manufacturers have been deterred from producing engines with separate cylinders because of the high cost.