Photo: unusual transport with car engines (newsroom.porsche.com) Author: Konstantin Shirokun
There was a time when cars generously shared their powertrain with other types of transport. Why is it that nowadays a car engine can only be seen under the hood of a car?
Read about how car engines ended up under the hoods of other vehicles in the RBC-Ukraine article.
Airplane and Porsche: Mooney M20L PFM
The boxer engine from Porsche sports cars has long been popular with manufacturers of light aircraft. The most recent attempt to make them friends, although the outcome was mixed, was in 1988, when private jet manufacturer Mooney launched the M20L PFM, the last three letters of which stood for Porsche Flug Motor.
The six-cylinder boxer engine from the Porsche 911 seemed to be asking to be put under the hood of an airplane: flat, light, with air cooling convenient for aviation, and also with textbook German reliability. They tried to present it to consumers as economical and comfortable, without vibrations and unnecessary noise. And the characteristics were beautiful: the Porsche Flug Motor with a volume of 3.164 liters in the inflatable version produced 260 horsepower, and in the atmospheric version – 210 hp.
But, oddly enough, the idea of an economical airplane did not appeal to American pilots (the USA is the main market for small aircraft). Demand was low, and in 1990, production of the engine was discontinued. And then it got to the point that in 2005, Porsche bought out those airplanes with PFM that remained in service, so as not to have the hassle of servicing them. At the same time, those owners in Europe, Australia and America who refused to sell their birds to the manufacturer are still using them: the Porsche aircraft engine turned out to be very durable and reliable.
Kamikaze boat and Toyota: Shinyo
In addition to the well-known kamikaze planes, kamikaze boats appeared in Japan towards the end of World War II. Sailors classified them as assault boats, but for the uninitiated, they looked more like guided torpedoes. A high-speed boat, accelerating to 55 km/h, under the control of one person, was supposed to break through the barrage of escort ships and hit the side of the most important ship or vessel of the convoy with its bow. The impact activated the explosion of 300 kg of TNT, which was enough to destroy, say, a small aircraft carrier. The use of numerous Shinyo (6,200 were built) was not particularly successful, but we are interested in something else.
The kamikaze boat was accelerated to a speed worthy of sea standards by a car engine – a straight-six Toyota KC with a power of 67 horsepower. It is noteworthy that in fact it was a copied American engine Chevrolet Stovebolt 207 model 1933, but the Japanese not only recreated it in their own factories, but also added a little power to it.
Snowmobile and Chrysler: Tucker Sno-Cat Type 743
One of the most famous conquerors of Antarctica and the South Pole, the American snowmobile Tucker Sno-Cat, also used a car engine. And it was also a Chrysler, but this time in the form of a V-shaped eight. Several vehicles specially prepared for Antarctic routes had a gasoline engine with a capacity of 182 hp with a drive to four separate tracks. The 6-meter machine weighing 3.5 tons developed a maximum speed of 25 km / h and could carry loads weighing up to 2.7 tons. Burning 70 liters of fuel for every 100 kilometers, four of these all-terrain vehicles crossed the entire Antarctica, covering 3,473 kilometers in 98 days.
In brief
In those long-forgotten times, when engine designers had only one task – to extract the required power and torque from the motor shaft, engines of various purposes differed little from each other. More precisely, they did not differ at all. The same unit could be seen under the hood of a truck, and a luxury sedan, and a light tank, and even an airplane.
Now everything is different: it is not enough for a car engine to produce the required power. It must warm up quickly, weigh little, eat little, not pollute the atmosphere, not make noise, not shake… Yes, it meets all these requirements today – but because of this it is not suitable for a tank, a boat, or an airplane… Who knows, maybe it is good.
In preparing this article, materials from Automobilist and World War II Database were used.
Let us recall that RBC-Ukraine recently reported why pedestrians are not always right.