Got a Spare Airplane Engine?

WE’VE ALL HEARD the old adage — there’s no replacement for displacement.

I lived by that credo for years — as did the rest of America. This phrase reached its zenith during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Cadillac introduced the 500-ci V8 in the 1970 Eldorado. There was another adage at the time that said a big engine working slowly will get better mileage than a small engine working hard.

Let’s face it — we really had no idea how to make small engines in those days because there was no need for them. It would always make me smile when I read the English car magazines, and they would refer to the Ford 289-ci engine in the Mustang as a big block. It was ironic because Lee Iacocca worried at the time that the 289-ci engine was too small.

Chevy had the 327, Chrysler had the 318 and 340 — and the 426 Hemi and 440. Here’s a piece of useless trivia for you: Do you know why they stopped building the 426 Hemi? It’s because they could build the 440 for five dollars an engine cheaper.

Huge displacement

The United States did not tax engines by bore and stroke the way many European countries did. I believe the United States still holds the record for the largest production automobile engine ever built — the Pierce-Arrow Model 66 sported a 825-ci, six-cylinder engine with three spark plugs per cylinder! I am fortunate enough to own one of these incredible torque monsters. The engine’s redline is somewhere around 1,600 rpm. Because of the engine’s slow-revving nature, wear is minimal and the engines seem to last forever. To this day, mine has never had the engine opened up for any reason.

During the early days of racing, you put an airplane engine in your car if you wanted to go really fast. Airplane engines were used because they were just better, faster versions of automobile engines. Many parts were redundant — meaning they had two of them. Dual ignitions were popular — usually one was a battery and coil and the other one a magneto. This practice started to die out by the late 1930s, when aircraft design got more specific — such as 18-cylinder radial engines for big airplanes.

Big cars, big airplane engines

My first example of a car of this type was a 1915 Hispano-Suiza chassis with a 18.8-liter 1915 Hispano aero engine in it. Designed by Marc Birkigt, it was the first V8 aero engine, and it really won World War I for the allies. The engine was built in America under the name Wright-Martin; it was built in England by Wolseley and it was built in France and Spain by Hispano-Suiza. After World War I, many of these engines were cut down to just one bank of cylinders and were used in quarter midget cars.

I’ve been driving this Hispano-Suiza for almost 40 years, and it still brings a smile to my face. Other examples of cars of this nature would be my 1914 Fiat race car which features a 1914 Fiat 12A 6-cylinder aero engine with a bevel drive to the overhead cam and 4 valves per cylinder. This engine has a displacement of about 22 litres — and was built in 1914. Each cylinder is practically a 350-ci Chevy engine.

Another favorite of mine is my 1934 Rolls Royce P11 chassis fitted with a 27-liter Merlin aircraft engine out of a 1944 de Havilland Mosquito. Using our 3D printer, we were able to make an intake manifold, which allowed us to have what I believe is the only Merlin engine running on Weber carburetors. This 27-liter Merlin is my favorite aircraft engine of all time, not only for its engineering — but also for all its romantic implications.

How about tank engines?

If we are talking sheer size, the winner has to be the Tank Car. Built around the M47 Patton tank engine from the Korean War era, the car weights 5 tons and features a Continental AV-1790-5B V12 air-cooled engine which runs on gasoline and makes 810 horsepower. We have hotrodded it a bit by fitting two Indy car turbos and Bosch fuel injection — along with an Allison 6-speed, double- overdrive transmission. Our genius friend — legendary hot rodder Gale Banks — made all this possible. The car has a wheelbase of 197 inches.

This is the car Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to buy whenever he comes to my garage.

Tiny displacement cars

Let’s flip the switch a bit and go in the other direction. On the small side, one of my absolute favorites is my 1964 Honda S600. It has a 606-cc engine that makes 57 horsepower. It has a DOHC design and is water-cooled. This is not a motorcycle engine, but it was purpose built for this application. It has a redline of 9,500 rpm — and it was built in 1964! It is truly a jewel of an engine.

If this engine had the name Porsche on it, this Honda would be a million-dollar car.

My other minuscule choice is no less intriguing. The Panhard BT24 has a a 850-cc, air-cooled, boxer engine like a BMW motorcycle. This engine makes between 60 and 70 horsepower, depending on who you believe. The engine has a roller bearing crank and torsion bar valve springs. These things love to rev and are a hoot to drive The car has a top speed of 98 mph — oh, hell, call it 100 mph.

At the time it was built, the engine was smaller than a VW engine — with half the number of cylinders but twice the power. Unlike the aero engine monsters this article opened with, you can use all the power this tiny engine all the time.

People always ask me if you could only have one car which would you choose, and I always say, “This isn’t communist Russia — I don’t have to choose! Welcome to America!”

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