Posts Tagged cars
1943 Willys-Overland Jeep
Inline 4-cylinder engine, L-head valves, 134 cubic inches displacement, 54 horsepower
Simplicity and ease of maintenance were important requirements when the Army put out the request to manufacturers that ultimately produced the Jeep. Willys-Overland’s 4-cylinder engine – nicknamed “Go Devil” – offered sufficient horsepower and an impressive 104 pound-feet of torque in a compact, reliable package. It was easy to service, too. The fuel filter, carburetor and air cleaner are all within easy reach under the hood.
Matt Anderson is the Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford.
1940s, 20th century, World War II, Henry Ford Museum, Engines Exposed, engines, Driving America, cars, by Matt Anderson
As you might expect, a car company with as long a life and as many different vehicles in production at various times as Ford Motor Company needed to document down to individual nuts and bolts each part of each vehicle. Over the 50 years between 1903 and 1957, Ford produced more than one million parts drawings, a comprehensive microfiche set of which now reside in The Henry Ford’s Benson Ford Research Center. We’ve just digitized several hundred of these parts drawings, including a couple dozen, like this one, that cover Model T ambulances built by Ford to be used during World War I.
Go online to learn more about our parts drawings holdings, or browse all the digitized Ford parts drawings in our Digital Collections.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
Europe, Michigan, 1910s, 20th century, World War I, Model Ts, Ford Motor Company, drawings, digital collections, cars, by Ellice Engdahl, archives
Chrysler’s Portal concept car. The company that invented the minivan now reimagines it.
It’s that time of year again, when the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) brings the world’s largest automobile manufacturers to Detroit to tempt us with their upcoming models – and tease us with a few dreamy concepts. As usual, the show does not disappoint. Autonomous concept cars, compact crossovers and alternative fuels are all prominent at this year’s event.
Ford’s 2016 GT Le Mans winner, still covered in dust and glory.
Ford is rightfully proud of its big win in the GTE-Pro class at the 2016 Le Mans 24-hour race. Not surprisingly, the #68 GT piloted to victory by Sebastien Bourdais, Joey Hand and Dirk Muller is front and center at the company’s booth. What is pleasantly surprising, though, is that the Blue Oval resisted the urge to clean up the car and instead is displaying it in all of its battle-scarred glory. The GT wears that dirt and grime like a badge of honor.
Ford’s autonomous Fusion Hybrid. The company promises a fully autonomous car for public use in 2021.
Ford has made headlines recently with its plan to reposition itself as a mobility company rather than a carmaker. Head to the back of the firm’s NAIAS space and you’ll see that it’s more than mere talk. There’s a Go Bike from Ford’s bicycle sharing program in San Francisco, and a mention of the Chariot ride-sharing service the company purchased there in 2016. The real highlight for me, though, was the autonomous Fusion Hybrid. Apart from a pair of LIDAR units mounted above the side-view mirrors, most of the car’s sensors are hidden in what could pass for a luggage rack. Ford promises a fully autonomous vehicle in ride-sharing service in 2021. It seems the car won’t look all that different from anything else on the road. (While those LIDAR units are fairly discreet, I’m holding out for the inevitable autonomous car with an infrared scanner.)
I always love the cutaways, like this V-6 from the all-wheel drive Cadillac CT6. Note the black driveshaft, running alongside the gearbox and bell housing, which sends power to the front wheels.
Chevrolet Bolt, the 2017 North American Car of the Year.
General Motors has its own reason to crow. The Chevrolet Bolt takes honors as 2017’s North American Car of the Year. Chevy promises 90 miles of range with a 30-minute charge, certainly impressive in the EV category. And the Bolt’s 0-60 m.p.h. time of 6.5 seconds may not be Tesla-type ludicrous, but it’s a full second faster than many of its gas-powered subcompact competitors. And speaking of unconventional fuels, the General’s GMC Terrain crossover gets an optional diesel engine for 2018. GM hasn’t always had the best of luck with diesels, but the fuel efficient 1.6-liter engine could make Terrain buyers happy at the pump.
Gustaf, the Volvo Spokesmoose. He’s there to promote the Swedish carmaker’s large animal detection system – and to provide a fun photo opportunity.
The 2018 Toyota Camry gets an aggressive look to match its aggressive sales.
Toyota always mounts an impressive display at NAIAS, and this year is no exception. The company’s big surprise is a robust facelift to its perennially best-selling Camry. The 2018 model gets an angular, aggressive front end wholly unexpected on a sedan that’s practically synonymous with, well, “practical.” They say you should never mess with success, but you don’t become the world’s largest automaker by taking blind risks. I’m sure the focus groups loved the redesign. Besides, it’ll look great at Daytona.
Volkswagen’s I.D. Buzz autonomous van. Think how many more mysteries Scooby and the gang could solve if Fred didn’t have to worry about driving.
Thanks to its diesel shenanigans, Volkswagen had a rough year, but you wouldn’t know it looking at the German manufacturer’s NAIAS booth. They’ve brought what might be the most eye-catching concept vehicle at Cobo Center. The I.D. Buzz is a cheery homage to the classic Microbus, but the hippies have gone high-tech. The Buzz is all-electric – and intended to be fully autonomous. As envisioned, the van gives owners the best of both worlds with a standard manual mode that can be switched over to automatic whenever the driver needs a break.
Presumably, the gas tank on this one is empty while it’s in Cobo Center – just like it was when Alexander Rossi coasted across the finish line in first place at last year’s Indianapolis 500.
Another notable race car, the 2006 Rust-eze Special. Sure to be a hit with the toddler set.
While I could have spent the whole day wandering through the main hall, I’m glad I saved some time for the lower level. From January 8-12, the space hosted “AutoMobili-D,” a dedicated exhibition focused on autonomous vehicle research, urban mobility, and a number of techy startup companies. Of particular note was the booth devoted to the University of Michigan’s Mcity autonomous vehicle test facility. That Ann Arbor track, together with the American Center for Mobility at Willow Run, enables Michigan to hold its own against the tech titans of Silicon Valley, who threaten to take away the Great Lake State’s mantle of automobile R&D leadership.
The Henry Ford’s 2010 Edison2, on view in Campus Martius.
If your visit to NAIAS takes you through Campus Martius, you might take a moment to peek in the lobby of the One Campus Martius building. There you’ll find our own Edison2 concept car, winner of the 2010 Progressive Automotive X Prize. The gasoline-powered vehicle, which weighs all of 830 pounds, got more than 100 miles per gallon during the competition. What with all of the folks from around the globe in Detroit this week, we thought we might tempt them to visit us in Dearborn. What better break from the cars of today and tomorrow than a look at the innovative automobiles of yesterday?
Matt Anderson is Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford.
events, 21st century, 2010s, technology, NAIAS, Michigan, Detroit, cars, car shows, by Matt Anderson, autonomous technology
Dozens of engines will be on view during Engines Exposed, but here Matt Anderson, Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford, describes some of his favorites to kick off this annual exhibit.
1909 Ford Model T
Inline 4-cylinder engine, L-head valves, 177 cubic inches displacement, 22 horsepower
Early Model T engines circulated cooling water with a gear-driven pump, visible just behind this engine’s fan. After 2,500 units, Ford switched to a simpler – and less expensive – thermosiphon system dependent on natural convection. Model T never used an oil pump. The flywheel, spinning in an oil bath, simply splashed the lubricant around. The engine and transmission efficiently shared the same oil supply.
Engines Exposed, 20th century, 1900s, Model Ts, Henry Ford Museum, Ford Motor Company, engines, Driving America, cars
We continue to digitize one of the highlights of our vast auto racing collections, the Dave Friedman collection of photos. Over the course of 2016, we added 2,330 new items from this collection to our online holdings, bringing the total digitized from the Friedman collection to almost 21,000 images.
While these images capture the drama and the spectacle of car racing in the 1960s, nearly nine out of ten of those we’ve digitized thus far are black-and-white photos. However, we’ve just digitized a set of several dozen color images from the 1960 United States Grand Prix at Riverside, including this shot where you can enjoy the vivid red noses of the cars.
See more pics from the same race, or browse all our digitized color images from the Dave Friedman collection in our Digital Collections.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
California, cars, race cars, 20th century, 1960s, racing, photographs, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl
Our Bugatti Royale (Temporarily) Heads to California in 2017
Undoubtedly, our 1931 Bugatti Type 41 Royale is one of the most popular automobiles in The Henry Ford’s collection. Rarely off display, the Royale has been a fixture in Henry Ford Museum for decades. It’s rare to walk by the car and not see at least one person snapping a photo, studying the label, or simply daydreaming about what it’s like behind that big steering wheel. And why not? The Royale has everything going for it: beautiful styling, superb engineering, and a princely price tag – not to mention, as one of only six in the world, exceptional exclusivity.
Needless to say, it would take something very special for us to loan the Bugatti to another museum. Our friends at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles have presented us with just such a reason. Last month, the Petersen opened an exciting new year-long exhibition, The Art of Bugatti. Automobile aficionados know the Bugatti name via the magnificent race and road cars built by Ettore Bugatti in the 1920s and 1930s. But Ettore was just one member of this remarkably artistic Italian-French family. Ettore’s father, Carlo Bugatti, designed exquisite furnishings. Ettore’s brother, Rembrandt, was a talented sculptor. (The elephant that sits atop our Royale’s radiator is based on a piece by Rembrandt Bugatti.) Ettore’s niece (and Rembrandt’s daughter), Lidia, was an accomplished artist.
The Bugatti Royale’s distinctive elephant mascot was cast from a sculpture by Rembrandt Bugatti, brother of Royale designer Ettore Bugatti.
Furniture, paintings, sculpture, silver and – of course – automobiles from each of these three Bugatti generations are featured in the Petersen’s show. The broad-ranging exhibit even reaches into the present day. Volkswagen, current owner of the Bugatti marque, has loaned a 2016 Bugatti Chiron to the show. The two-seat supercar, capable of an astounding 260 miles per hour, carries forward Ettore Bugatti’s tradition of elegance combined with performance.
Our Bugatti Royale will be away at the Petersen for five months. The car leaves Henry Ford Museum in mid-January 2017 and returns in mid-June. While it’s away, we’re going to fill the Bugatti’s place in Driving America with another special luxury car from our collection: J.P. Morgan, Jr.’s 1926 Rolls-Royce New Phantom Limousine. It’s been several years since the Rolls-Royce has been on view, so the loan provides a special opportunity for The Henry Ford’s visitors, too.
We are proud to be a part of this wonderful new Bugatti exhibition, and we encourage anyone visiting southern California between now and October 2017 to stop by the Petersen. It’s properly regarded as one of the world’s finest auto museums, and The Art of Bugatti only adds to that reputation.
Matt Anderson is Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford.
convertibles, luxury cars, Henry Ford Museum, Driving America, cars, by Matt Anderson
Elon Musk thinks big. The mission of his car company, Tesla Motors, is “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” while his commercial space travel business, SpaceX, aims “to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.”
In June 2008, The Henry Ford visited SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California, campus to interview Musk about these lofty goals, a trip that resulted in a lengthy oral history now available online in both video and transcript format as part of The Henry Ford’s Visionaries on Innovation series. At the time the interview was conducted, Detroit photographer Michelle Andonian also documented the whole experience, taking many pictures of the facility, the museum staff who participated, and Musk himself. We’ve just added nearly 200 of these images to our Digital Collections, including this photo of Musk hard at work at his desk.
Visit our Digital Collections to enter Elon Musk’s world through these images.
Additional Readings:
- Ingersoll-Rand Diesel-Electric Locomotive
- The Allegheny Articulated Steam Locomotive: Technology Pushed to the Limit
- Westinghouse Portable Steam Engine No. 345
- IMLS: Looking Back & Moving Forward
California, 21st century, 2000s, space, power, entrepreneurship, digital collections, cars, by Ellice Engdahl, alternative fuel vehicles
The original paint surface on the 1967 Ford Mark IV race car is very unstable. The Stringo helps us move the car with minimal handling.
Moving cars can seem like a no-brainer – they are designed to move, and they are at the core of our modern understanding of mobility. Much of our modern infrastructure, from roads and bridges to GPS satellites, is designed around getting cars to move from place to place quickly and efficiently. Cars that drive themselves seems a likelihood that is just around the corner.
So moving cars that are part of museum collections shouldn’t be a big deal, should it? Well, you’d be surprised.
The Henry Ford has over 250 cars, trucks, and other motorized vehicles in its collection, and each presents its own special set of problems when it comes moving them. To start, we keep only a handful of cars operational at any one time, and even those that are operational can’t be run indoors. So we have to push cars, which has the effect of making every little detail about the cars a big deal.
Do the tires hold air? Do the wheels roll? Do the brakes work? Does the transmission and drivetrain move freely, or is the engine stuck in gear? What kind of transmission does it have? How heavy is the car? Is it gas, electric or steam powered? Does the car need electric power to release the steering or move the transmission? What parts of the car body can be touched? Is the paint stable or flaking; is it original or was the vehicle repainted? Is the interior original or replaced? Can you sit on the seats or hold the steering wheel? All of these questions and more go into our decisions about how were go about moving one of our historic vehicles.
We make use of a variety of tools to help us move cars: dollies, rolling service jacks, Go-Jaks ®, flat carts or rolling platforms, slings, and forklifts. Some cars are easy, and move into place with one person steering and a few pushing. We use dollies or rolling jacks to move the car in tight quarters, or if the wheels don’t roll properly. Other cars are more problematic – we’ve even removed body sections of cars with fragile paint, to avoid having to push on those surfaces. Others have fragile tires which can’t even support the weight of the car. Moving a car like that is more like moving a large sculpture than a vehicle.
Recently, we’ve added a new tool to our car-moving toolbox. Thanks to a generous gift from the manufacturer, we’ve acquired a Stringo ® vehicle mover. It’s a bit like an electric pallet jack for cars – it picks up and secures two wheels of a car and then pulls or pushes the car where ever it needs to go. We can make car moves now with just one or two people, instead of as many as six, and can do it almost without touching the car at all. 
We moved this 1901 Columbia Electric Victoria on floor jacks. The tires were old and brittle, so they rolled poorly.
The Goldenrod, a 1965 land speed racer, had its own set of rolling gantries for moving.
This 1950 Chrysler New Yorker can roll on its own tires.
To get this 1959 Cadillac up onto an exhibition platform, we needed to get it on dollies, and roll it up a ramp.
Our Stringo captures the front wheels of the 1964 Mustang and moves it, so a car can be moved by one person.
With hundreds of car moves ahead of us in the not-too-distant future, we are looking forward to making good use of our new Stringo ®.
Jim McCabe is former Special Projects Manager at The Henry Ford.
philanthropy, cars, by Jim McCabe, collections care, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford
Every year, the first Friday in October brings Manufacturing Day, a time to celebrate the contribution that modern manufacturing makes to our lives. We see it not only in the countless products we use every day, but in the many jobs that manufacturing provides to American workers.
We thought it would be appropriate to mark the day with a look back at the most influential manufacturing innovation of the 20th century: Henry Ford’s moving assembly line. By combining interchangeable parts with the subdivision of labor and the movement of work to workers, Ford dramatically increased the speed with which his employees built Model T automobiles – reducing the car’s price and boosting sales as a result. The moving assembly line quickly spread to other automakers, and then to manufacturers of all types. Today, almost anything you can name is made on an assembly line, from helicopters to hamburgers.
Here, in honor of Manufacturing Day, is an Expert Set of 25 photos, documents and artifacts that tell the story of Henry Ford’s ground-breaking manufacturing technique.
Henry Ford: Assembly Line
Matt Anderson is Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford.
by Matt Anderson, Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford, cars, manufacturing
The Cornell-Liberty Safety Car – space age and safety conscious. (THF90867)
We have our share of unusual-looking automobiles in Henry Ford Museum. The Tucker, the Belly Tank Lakester and the Comuta-Car all turn heads. But there’s only one that looks like it just flew in from the Spacely Space Sprockets factory: the 1957 Cornell-Liberty Safety Car. Behind that endearingly odd exterior, though, was a serious five-year effort to save lives by making American cars safer.
Over the first half of the 20th century, many automakers focused their efforts on making cars more reliable, more comfortable and more powerful. Safety was a lesser concern. There were exceptions – laminated windshield glass, which didn’t break into sharp pieces, was in use by the late 1920s – but conventional wisdom held that safety didn’t sell. Customers wanted their cars to be faster, not safer.
By the 1950s, that attitude began to change. Cars were certainly faster by then, but they also had roads to accommodate the higher speeds. State-built turnpikes and federally-funded Interstates had drivers zipping along at 75 miles per hour, and the booming postwar economy put more Americans behind the wheel each year. It’s little wonder that more drivers traveling at faster speeds led to a rise in accidents. By 1950, some 35,000 people were dying in auto accidents each year. Faculty members at Cornell University and officials at Liberty Mutual insurance took notice. In 1951, the two institutions teamed up to research a simple question: What causes injuries in automobile accidents?
Steering wheels and sharp edges could be lethal. (THF103543)
America’s highways became a laboratory, and police officers and emergency room doctors became research assistants. By carefully studying accident reports and medical records from around the country, the Cornell-Liberty team made several key discoveries. Car doors were a weak spot. Too often in an accident, a door was smashed open and one or more of the occupants was thrown from the vehicle. Furthermore, the team discovered that someone thrown from a car was more than twice as likely to receive serious injury. They learned that back seat passengers were three times safer than those in the front during a crash.
Researchers determined that the head was the most frequently injured part of the body, and that one in ten victims received a facial disfigurement. Contrary to popular belief at the time, the steering wheel provided no extra protection to the driver. Indeed, the wheel was often a cause of injury, being pushed into a driver’s chest during a crash. What’s more, control knobs, window frames and decorative ornaments often maimed accident victims.
Bucket seats cradle passengers while seat belts keep them secure. (THF90862)
The Cornell-Liberty team put its findings into practice by building a concept car that reduced or eliminated many of these dangers. Working from a 1956 Ford Fairlane, the team produced a car incorporating more than 60 protective features. In effect, they thought of their car like a giant egg carton designed to keep its fragile contents secure. The safety car’s accordion-style doors latched in three places, keeping them closed in a crash. Its bumper wrapped completely around the vehicle, protecting in low-speed accidents. Seat belts were prominent. Head restraints prevented whiplash injuries. The steering wheel and column were replaced by a pair of control handles. The dashboard, like other interior surfaces, was padded. Door handles were recessed. Unnecessary badges and baubles were removed.
The dashboard is uncluttered and the gauges are easy to read. (THF90865)
The best way to survive an accident is to avoid one, so the Cornell-Liberty team took driver visibility and distraction into account. The panoramic windshield – cleaned by five wipers – gave the driver an unobstructed view (as did the driver’s position, in the middle of the car rather than on the left side). Controls were kept to a minimum, and the oversized speedometer dial and gauges were placed directly below the driver’s sightline. The fuel gauge even had a “low level” indicator – something of a novelty in 1957. Indeed, the Cornell-Liberty team seemed to have anticipated every possible distraction; contemporary press reports noted that the offset front seats discouraged “necking while driving.”
Neither Cornell nor Liberty Mutual had any plans to manufacture or sell safety cars, of course. Instead, they hoped that their project would bring more attention to crash protection from the public and – more to the point – from automakers. A decade later, after some additional prodding from Ralph Nader and new government regulations, safety was an established priority in Detroit. And while the car you drive today may not have five windshield wipers or handlebar steering, it’s certainly got a bit of the 1957 Liberty-Cornell Safety Car inside.
Matt Anderson is Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford.
research, Driving America, Henry Ford Museum, cars, by Matt Anderson
