It’s Boxing Day So Let’s Think About Some Lesser-Known Boxers: Cold Start

I hope everyone is having a fantastic holiday, whatever depraved madness you celebrate! Today, December 26, has a lot of specific holidays associated with it, from St.Stephen’s day (who seems to be the first martyr of Christianity because he got stoned, not in the fun way), to Kwanzaa to the one I want to mention specifically here because I can easily tie it into something car-related, Boxing Day.

Boxing Day has always confused me a bit, since it’s not really celebrated here, being more of a Commonwealth Country sort of deal, and here in America we pretty famously opted out of that club. The etymology of the name isn’t really clear, but most theories seem to think it comes from the presents or tips or bonuses given to employees or servants or other sorts of workers by wealthier people in a “Christmas Box.”

That’s great and all, but what I care about more is the “boxing” part because that word also refers to the sport where boxers pummel one another, and that action, in turn, became a nickname for horizontally-opposed engines, where the side-to-side motion of the cylinders is reminiscent of a boxer’s fists.

Now why the word “box” refers to a rectangular container and a sport of face-punching is especially unclear, and every entomologist I called didn’t have any answers for me, perhaps because, as they screamed into their phones, they study bugs. The etymologists I called afterwards weren’t much more help, just telling me the word “box” referring to punching was of “uncertain origin” and showed up around the 1300s. Thanks a lot, brainiacs!

Anyway, let’s get to the cars. When it comes to boxer-engined cars, there’s the big ones we always think of: Porsche, (air-cooled – and, okay, the Wasserboxer) Volkswagen, Subaru, Lloyd – you know, the big names. But let’s talk about a couple of lesser-known boxer-powered cars.

Like Buick!

Yes, Buick! One of the companies I think I associate the least with horizontally-opposed engines, Buick’s first car as an independent automaker was the 1904 Model B, which featured a 2.6-liter flat-twin making 21 hp! That engine was also the first production engine to have overhead valves, so that’s a big deal, too.

They sold the engine separately, too, so if you wanted Buick Boxer power for your, say, sausage grinder, you could achieve that dream!

By 1910 Buick had moved to four-cylinder inline engines, but had it not been for that original opposed-twin, Buick would never have gotten its start at all.

I think when it comes to relatively unsung horizontally-opposed standard-bearers, though, you can’t be Jowett. Jowett was a Yorkshire-based company that lasted from 1906 to 1955, a company that started with cycles and engines, but moved into light car production and became best known for their small, sleek, sporty cars that used boxer engines, twins at first, and then, from 1936, flat-fours.

Jowett also had some fantastic car names, including the Javelin, Jupiter, Blackbird, Kestrel, Weasel, and even the Jason. Yes, a car that shares my name!

Or maybe I share its name. One of those.

I think I’ve seen Jowetts in the metal perhaps twice in my life, both times in the UK. I suspect there must be a few here in America, collected by very discerning collectors, but I don’t think I’ve seen any here.

Which is a shame! I feel like these should be better-known. Sports cars like the Jupiter up there have a sort of shrunken-Jag feeling about them, but with an engine that, I think you could argue, is even more interesting than the larger, more powerful guts of their more famous countrymen.

Their more everyday cars, like the Javelin, feel like they could have been huge-selling people’s cars in some alternate reality, and 50 hp from that 1.5-liter flat-four back in 1947 is definitely no joke.

I hope these less-known boxers make your boxing day even punchier, or whatever adjective gets used for that!