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Auto Q & A: Fours, Sixes, Eights, and Twelves
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Posted by editor Mon Jan 15, 2007 11:34:15 PST
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0 responses 0 comments Dear Q & A: It’s my impression that car engines are more efficient than they were a couple of decades ago. Aren’t some six cylinders today delivering as much horsepower as V-8s did in the 1960s? So things are getting better, aren’t they, and it’s OK to be an optimist about cars?      — Charley M.

Dear CM: Why not? To get a quantified idea of how much better some new production engines are, take the Volkswagen GTI for 2007. A 2.0-liter (200 centiliter) displacement four, it produces 200 horsepower. Compare that with the 1971 Chevy Malibu’s 5-liter V-8, with only 200 hp, or the 1993 Chevy Caprice, at 180 hp from a 5.73-liter V-8.

VW’s feat is one horsepower per centiliter (cl). We used to celebrate Detroit Iron when it managed one hp per cubic inch, as in the 1957 Chevrolet 283 CID V-8. The improvement is all the more impressive when we realize that one cl is only 0.61 cubic inch. So why not be optimistic? And there’s more and better to come.

Dear Q & A: I saw a Pierce Arrow car (about a 1937, I think) in the parking lot outside Kohnen’s German bakery some months ago, and it was one massive car. We never hear much about them anymore. I guess they stopped making them before World War II. Can you tell me something about them? My father had some stock in the Pierce Arrow company and lost it all when the company failed. I hear it was a pretty good car.       — James T.

Dear JT: It was, for sure. Already well known as a luxury car in 1908, President Taft, by selecting Pierce Arrow as his vehicle for state occasions, gave PA a tremendous boost in prestige. When President Wilson transferred the nation’s reins to President-elect Harding in 1921, it was a Pierce Arrow they rode in together to Harding’s inauguration. Other heads of state who’ve owned PAs include Japan’s Hirohito, Belgium’s King Albert, Arabia’s Ibn Saud, and Iran’s Shah.

The single most strikingly apparent feature of the Arrows was their headlights.
Beginning in 1914, they were mounted atop and faired into the front fenders.
Ironically, the major automakers didn’t follow PA’s styling advance until 1939, the year after the company’s demise, when Chrysler and Ford integrated all their cars’ headlights fully into the front fenders, conservative GM following in 1941.

Another stylistic initiative some 20 years ahead of its time was the company’s 1933 Silver Arrow, whose front fenders did not end ahead of the front doors but were extended back forming a continuous smooth surface all the way to the rear fenders. Kaiser and Frazer took this concept the final logical step in 1947, when their rear fenders, too, no longer protruded to break the flow. The slab-sided cars we consider conventional today trace their origins to these innovators.

Pierce automobiles were powered by the one-cylinder De Dion in the first models of 1901, but they became known world-wide for their straight-eights and twelves in the 1920s and ’30s. In 1929 PA introduced a 125-hp straight-eight that helped the company sell over 10,000 cars, the most in its history. But competition with Packard and Cadillac, which had begun offering V-12s and V-16s, pushed Pierce Arrow to put out its own twelve in 1932, just as the Depression entered its worst trough. Bad decision. With no economy model in its lineup (like Packard’s 110 and Cadillac’s LaSalle), PA tried but failed to sell enough luxury cars to stay afloat. Next time you’re in Buffalo, check out the Pierce Arrow Museum located at 210 Seneca St. They can be reached at (716) 853-0084.

Send your automotive questions to Auto Q & A, Box 2222, Tehachapi, CA 93581.

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