F.W. Lanchester - the visionary and Renaissance man
To say that the Lanchester was different hardly does justice to one of the
most remarkable automobiles of the Edwardian Age. Even in 1910, its bug-eyed,
hoodless appearance was so unorthodox that the directors of the Lanchester
Motor Company in Birmingham, England, feared it would be spurned. Since
the turn of the century, the long hood and cowl had enjoyed wide public
acceptance in Europe. The Lanchester possessed neither of these features,
and thus flew in the face of fashion. But that was nothing new. It's inventor
was uninterested in how it looked as long as it satisfied his exacting standards
for fleet, dependable transportation with optimum comfort for its riders.
Frederick Lanchester was a Renaissance man whose visionary automotive achievements
are reflected in many modern cars - seldom with any acknowledgment of their
origin. His costly and smooth-running automobiles bore what came to be called
the "Lanchester look." Depending on who applied the label, it
was either intended to convey contempt or acclaim.
F.W. Lanchester - the inventor
As a young engineer who specialized in the development of gasoline engines,
Lanchester's true interest was mechanical flight. To avoid being branded
a lunatic, he wisely applied his considerable genius to an interim problem
that he believed would advance the science of aeronautics. In 1895, after
two years of careful study and experimentation, he produced the first serviceable
four-wheeled gasoline car in England. He did it by studying and then improving
upon what had been done on the Continent up to that time. Instead of relying
on the components of others, however, he designed and built his own. When
he needed a tool to make a part, he built that, too. His objective was to
create a car completely from scratch, and in doing so he made history.
He was the first to use the live axle and worm drive - a feature later widely
adopted for heavy transport vehicles. He introduced the tubular frame and
the intermediate speed, or second gear, in his transmissions. His effortless
system of shifting gears foreshadowed the automatic transmission. He was
the first to stabilize steering. From the outset, he manufactured interchangeable
parts machined to the finest tolerances. He did all of this before 1900,
and he still found time to patent a process for color photography (1895)
and to study mechanical flight. He perfected and patented the wick method
of carburetion, he employed detachable wire wheels, and he invented disc-type
brakes (1903), stamped steel pistons, hollow connecting rods, the torsional
vibration damper, and the harmonic balancer. To prevent bolts from being
jiggled loose from his cars - a common problem in early motoring - he designed
and manufactured the finely cut M thread. He was the first constructor to
use an accelerator pedal and the first to attach scraper rings to pistons.
F.W. Lanchester - the manufacturer
With the backing of Birmingham businessmen, Lanchester launched his 10-horsepower
production automobiles in 1901. Rudyard Kipling was among the early buyers.
A loyal clientele soon developed. Contrary to the custom of the times, Lanchester
insisted on manufacturing bodies for his cars, instead of offering them
as bare chassis to be finished by coachbuilders. Using jigs, he pioneered
interchangeable bodies that could be removed in minutes.
A new and improved line of Lanchesters was announced in 1905, featuring
models of 20 and 28 horsepower. The car in the Behring Collection is believed
to be the only vintage Lanchester in the United States and is one of the
few survivors from its period. It is a six cylinder, 28-horsepower Double
Landaulet on the long wheel base of 11 feet, 5 inches. Displacement is 3.6
liters. The engine develops 42 horsepower at 2200 RPM, producing a top speed
of 54 MPH. The Price was 750 Pounds, or approximately 3,750 dollars. The
canopy over the chauffeur's seat is removable, the windshield tilts backward,
and the landaulet collapses, creating an open car. Carried on cantilever
springs that were later copied by Rolls-Royce, the car glides along the
roadway. Crankshaft vibrations that made the earliest six-cylinder cars
shake like a barrel of bones were deadened as a result of Lanchester's inventiveness.
''I overcame this difficulty,'' he said modestly, "by fitting the flywheel
at the front end of the engine instead of the rear end, and employing a
pressure lubricated multi-disk clutch for the transmission which acted as
a damper." Other six-cylinder manufacturers simply told their customers
by way of reassurance that what they were hearing-and feeling-was "the
power rattle."
F.W. Lanchester - the pioneer
The Lanchester automobile owed its unusual appearance to the position of
its engine, which sat longitudinally between the two front seats, well behind
the axle. While this configuration gave the car greater stability, it also
made it look like a motorboat with engine amidships. The gas tank sat beneath
the chauffeur's seat. A small pump fed the famous wick carburetor, which,
when opened, resembled a dishpan sprouting stalks of celery. The cotton
wicks absorbed gasoline from a reservoir below and emitted the vapor into
a chamber above. Heated air carried the vapor into the induction port, where
it was mixed with cooler air before entering the combustion chamber. The
wick carburetor was oderless, clogless, and in other ways superior to contemporary
spray carburetors, which often failed at high speeds. For proper maintenance
of the carburetor, the manufacturer recommended that the wicks be removed
and washed every ten years.
If this seems like a commendable record of performance, consider the transmission,
whose parts often functioned for three decades without replacement. All
over England, vintage Lanchesters were still being driven daily during the
late 1930s-long after the company had been absorbed by Daimler and its inventor
had turned his talents to optics, music, relativity, radiation, and poetry.
Frederick Lanchester died on March 8, 1946, at the age of seventy-seven.
Much of the framework for modern automobile technology had its genesis in
his fertile mind, half a century before.
This article is reproduced with permission of the Behring Automobile Museum
of California
and is copyrighted by the Behring Automobile Museum.
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