Let’s Talk About Round Radiators And Why They Never Really Caught On

Who’s excited for a new sporadically-updated new series that has at least a 50% chance of being forgotten about after this first post? You are, that’s who! Welcome to Forgotten Fetishes, where I expose you to some bit of automotive design or practice or technical approach or marketing concept or metallurgical formula or something that had some brief flowering of niche interest, and then all but died out. To start things off, I want to talk about an automotive design solution that hasn’t really been seen with anything approaching regularity in over a century: the round radiator.

Yes, round radiators! The kind where there’s a big circular shape at the front and the whole hood is shaped like a prone barrel. I can’t say that these were ever a popular choice, but they did show up a good number of times over the years before finally becoming pretty much extinct by, oh, 1920. I think a comprehensive list of every carmaker to use a round radiator would be difficult, since so many of these cars were in that early 1900s era when car companies were popping up like hives on an irritated arm and then disappearing even faster.

There’s an example of such a car in this 1903 footage of Boston, found by an eagle-eyed car geek at the Pre War Car site (should be cued up, but it’s at 1:55 if not):

While round radiators were exceedingly rare, there were some notable carmakers that at least tried round radiators for some period of time, cars with names that are familiar to all of us, like Cottereau, or Bentall, or Marlborough, or Sigma, the Swiss company, or Britannia. You, know, the famous ones.

I’m kidding, of course; those are all painfully deep cuts. Like, deep, gonna need to drive to the hospital deep, cuts. In fact, there’s only two manufacturers that dabbled in round radiators that I can think of with names that may be recognizable: Riley, and maybe National.

The Riley 12/18 there was made from 1908 to 1914, and had more of an oval radiator than a round one, but I think it basically counts. National is perhaps a bit more interesting, because they really leaned into the whole round radiator thing, using it as their primary brand differentiator, at least for a while:

Other National cars dispensed with the round radiator, but for a while, that was very much National’s Thing. As far as why National went with a round radiator, they were nice enough to give some kind of explanation in their advertising materials:

So, they claim the “cylindrical form” gives it “unusual strength and rigidity” and note that the cooling fan covers the entire area, I guess because the round area described by the swirling fan blades would ordinarily leave the corners with somewhat less airflow, though I suspect in practice this really isn’t too big a deal.

Also – and this is my own speculation – I wonder if a round radiator had less propensity to leak, since there might be fewer seams, as the outer rim could just be made of a contiguous metal strip that meets at one seam? Potentially, rectangular radiators may have required seams at their corners, increasing the possibility of leaking. This may have been a thing?

The truth is, I’m not really certain. What I do know is that overall, round radiators really never caught on, so whatever advantages they offered couldn’t have been terribly dramatic. And, stying-wise, round grilles are unlikely to make a comeback, I’d think, at least based on modern styling trends.

Actually, that reminds me of one other sort-of example of the round radiator. I say sort of because there was no radiator involved, because the car was actually air-cooled.

Yes, Franklin Motors, who pioneered air-cooling for mainstream cars, had some models that used barrel-shaped hoods with round grilles that, while they didn’t actually have any sort of radiators in them, still looked very much like a round-radiator car. And, in this case, that was an entirely aesthetic decision. Honestly, I kind of like it, especially flanked by the big round headlamps.

Round radiators are a long-gone, and mostly forgotten automotive kink, but I think one worth remembering. When you do see a round-radiator car, it sticks in your head, and makes an impression, and what more do you want from your cars?

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