Bigger is better
A confession: I don’t really know very much about the automobile, technically. Had then going at me for a lifetime, but I have never actually owned one. However, I do listen to others, and as a result have some vocabulary. Any student knows that words are the foundation of superficial knowledge.
And, I am not afraid to listen to a good story, if it helps me to weave the threads into tissue. Like today, when I learned a whole lot about one year in the history of the automobile. 1932.
To refresh you, the world economy was into a major round of depression. Sales of automobiles were stagnant. And, it seems, having a lot of money allows one to dream. Right, Mr. Ford?
He had one of the largest concerns in the world, and he loved competition, as long as he came out on top. The 4-cylinder engine was the standard, and so when a competitor released a 6-cylinder, Ford went bigger. He wanted an 8-cylnider. The difficulty was one of scale, not money.
In great secrecy, he shut down his plants (plural) and then produced one. Not without difficulty, because this is more than bolting smaller engine blocks together.
I’ll leave you to discover the how and the when, but it’s a great story. Suffice to say that there were many models with a big motor, and that Ford remained incredible rich. All that matters, in that context. And I now know much more about balancing this and that and the other thing in a powerful engine.
