Engine Punk

I know this Austin Hall-Scott has a 10-litre 4 cylinder aero-engine but if it sounds like my mate's tractor that runs a turboed Ford Cargo engine, why not go hillclimbing with a truck engine? A question popped into my mind a couple of times recently about the powerplants in commercial vehicles and whether they might be suitable for engine punk activities - to wit, constructing a special for hill climbing and/or similar performance work. The Austin coach engine had a swept volume of 3460cc and put out 67.5 bhp at 2,900rpm This is not such a daft idea as it may sound at first. Many classic car engines began life in trade. The Humber 4-litre "Blue Riband" engine started out in Commer trucks and so did its rival at "The Austin", a similar 6-cylinder motor originally designed for Austin commercials vehicles, or Birmingham Bedfords as they were known. (The story goes that Leonard Lord approved the copying of a Bedford design to speed up the R & D proce...

Although looking dignified in black, many Mk1 Wolseley 1500s were spectacularly two-tone. Their lines seem to suit that sort of paint job Wolseley - ah! the name - it sounds to me like a slightly sozzled English bank manager, Captain Mainwaring's disreputable brother. Wolseley could be an adjective for wobbly wooziness whereas it is really a name synonomous with quality motoring and advanced aero-engine manufacture. Fought over by the William Morris and Herbert Austin for its expertise in overhead camshaft designs, the marque of Wolseley became a luxury Morris as British motor manufacturers emulated the American big 3 in its marketing structure as well as its mass production techniques. Wolseley subsequently  suffered the indignity of badge engineering under BMC but survived as a make of motor car until 1975. And straight from the stranger than fiction department, woolly old Wolseley has its origins in sheep shearing equipment. There used to be one of these machines preserv...