I’m writing this Cold Start far too late at night because we were out at the Motorlux event, which has a good amount of cars, aircraft, people, and, yes, booze, and then when I finally got back to my hotel room I made the mistake of lying down, just for a second, which is your brain’s way of tricking you into falling asleep, fully clothed and in awkward, uncomfortable positions, until you wake up with a start and realize, shit, I gotta do Cold Start! So that’s where I am. Happily, I have something I want to show you.
The main car I wanted to see at the event was a Meyers Manx that featured not the expected VW-type flat-four air-cooled engine or even an electric motor like Manx showed a couple Pebbles ago, but rather a surprising three-cylinder radial engine, from the Australian company Radial Motion, who sells them as engines for, among other things, helicopters.
We actually wrote about this engine last year, and I somehow forgot about that, even though I added an editor’s note which pointed out that one of the Volkswagen Beetle’s (remember, the Beetle is the car upon which Meyers Manx dune buggies have always been based) prototypes, built for Zündapp, used a strange five-cylinder radial engine:
So, there is some precedent to cramming radial engines into the back of Beetles and Beetle-derived cars.
The setup in the Manx is interesting; even though the engine appears air-cooled with those fins, it’s actually a liquid-cooled engine, with the radiator tucked away in the rear wall of the Manx’ cabin. The 2-liter engine – which uses GM LS1 V8 engine parts for the internals, like pistons – makes between 130 and 160 horsepower in the Manx application, but it can get up to 200 hp.
I’m very curious about this engine, especially because it appears to bolt right onto a normal air-cooled VW transaxle. I think we’ll see this in more detail later this week, so hopefully I’ll get more information.
Of course, there was all sorts of other great stuff at Motorlux, like this Lancia Flamina Superleggera:
Man, what a handsome car this is! Plus, fantastic taillights:
Why is it better that these are made of separate shaped pieces instead of one solid molded lens? I’m not sure, but they are better, and that’s just some sort of arcane taillight magic, best accepted and appreciated, and not explained.
Okay, I’m not entirely certain what car this one was; it reminded me a lot of a more refined Bill Thomas Cheetah, but it’s not. It was in a section of custom cars and one-offs, so it may be that, and I should know this, so forgive me. If anyone can clue me in, feel free to tell me in the comments.
Of course, I do know a Tucker when I see one, and there was a lovely wine-colored one right at the entrance, one of the 51 made. This one seems to have been director George Lucas’ Tucker, the man perhaps best known for kickstarting the career of Sy Snootles.
I got to peer inside the Tucker a bit, which made me realize two things:
The luggage area behind the back seat and over the flat-six engine is actually pretty huge, and also:
I always forget how strange the very open passenger side of the Tucker’s dashboard looked. For safety reasons, the Tucker dash and instruments were all in that binnacle in front of the driver, and the rest of the area was left open, below a padded bar. This setup strangely reminds me of a far, far less safe dashboard setup:
…an old VW Microbus! It also has all instruments in a little binnacle and openness to the passenger side, but instead of padded bars and carpet, you get sharp metal bits and a rubber mat and the realization that there is nothing in front of your legs beyond a thin sheet of steel. Still, I love these, and was reminded of that when we saw this incredible 1952 Type 2 bus in the parking lot of Motorlux:
It seems to have been an old dry cleaner’s van, based on the markings:
We saw this thing leaving with a driver and about eight or so women inside. It’s pretty incredible. I wonder if the people inside were “particular people” as the van’s rear barn door states?
There was also a fantastic lowrider featuring an ornate painting on the doorjamb, something I’m not sure I’ve seen done before, which also describes this wall of bacon:
It was delicious, but I can’t see this and not extrapolate out to a whole bacon curtain, or set of bacon drapes, which may be kind of hideous.
Okay, I’m getting some sleep now. There’s a ton going on tomorrow!
Eventually I will put some meaningful work into my Meyers Manx SR build. For now it’s a collection of fiberglass, a Beetle frame, a 75 hp electric motor, and a bunch of power electronics…
Since these buggies feature exposed engines, now I want one of these so I could extend the crankshaft out the back and add a prop. Hilarity should ensue!
Also, if that Manx were from Michigan, it would of course be a Meijer Manx (no ‘S’)
If you want to surprise her, get a Kaiser.
If you want to amaze her, get a Frazier.
Or you could get a Tucker.
It’s actually, “You could go Tucker” Go Tucker…
I was all ready to write a comment about the radial engine in the Meyers Manx and then you concluded the post with that bacon thing and I have so many questions.
Baker’s Bacon is very good. Local to the Monterey area, don’t know how far out of town it travels.
I looked at their website since the name was there. It looks pretty quality and honestly not as expensive as I expected for a vendor that is making an appearance at any sort of Monterey event.
I was more so overwhelmed with his display and what appears to be the different levels of doneness.
Probably not far, if it’s at room temp. With a good cooler and ice, much farther.
Sorry, bad Dad jokes over.
Old Bacon Drapes is how I will now refer to a particular ex-girlfriend.
Better than hanging eggs, I guess.
If/when reality twists my arm hard enough to have a full electric car, my only demand is that on activation it gives the sound of two rows of nine air cooled cylinders belching out a Pratt-Whitney idle cadence. Just like the opening sequence of the film “Catch 22”.
Same here. If we’re going to have fake engine noises, give us some damn fine engines, especially ones that would never be an option.
Dear Neighbor,
I appreciate that you have given your EV the fake engine sound of a Junkers JU 87, however, my grandfather was a little boy in England during WWII and every time you drive down the street it gives him horrible flashbacks. can you replace the WWII German bomber sound with something more pleasant, like the song from an ice cream truck?
I’d still prefer a flashback to the “worn brakes/’50s sci fi UFO” sound they use, but I assumed this was about the interior sound, not the exterior pedestrian warning one.
Cripes he has to be 100…
Go Gramps!
There was a rich guy who lived near me when I was growing up, who owned a Spitfire and would often fly over. So hearing a Merlin would give me good flashbacks to my childhood.
“The song from an ice cream truck”
As long as the song is not “Turkey n The Straw”, we’re good.
I’ve always wanted an EV that sounds like a pod racer.
I love radials, and that little three cylinder is a jewel. I also think it might have the strangest valvetrain layout of any engine, and probably holds the record for highest ratio of camshafts to cylinders for any pushrod engine – 3 cylinders, 6 camshafts! That’s especially noteworthy on a radial, which tend to have one big cam ‘ring’ that is concentric with the crank and driven with a planetary gearset.
I still want to swap a radial into a smaller inline shaft-drive bike like a Guzzi or a Honda CX. It’s completely the wrong shape since one cylinder is going to poke into the tank area and hit the frame, but I believe the world needs this.
(And yes there’s transverse radial bikes, but I’m funny that way.)
The cut of your jib, sir, I like it. 😉
As a former Honda CBX pilot, I’m not scared of a little engine sticking out in unexpected places. And how cool would it be to have the top cylinder’s valve cover sit kind of flush with the top of the ‘tank’ (fuel re-located into the frame a-la Buell or some similar trick) kind of acting like a 60’s Shaker hood?
An older Yamaha V-Max might be a good option, since the actual tank is under the seat and the ‘tank’ is a cover over the intakes.
Think there’s only 3 cams… aren’t the Radial Motion engines based around LS parts and are OHV not OHC?
Aha, I think you’re right!
I misunderstood what I was seeing at 10 seconds into this video on the Radial Motion website showing the geartrain; the top hole on the left of the engine is a blind hole, not another cam tunnel, so that explains it. I thought there were two cams per cylinder, and the bottom two were out of view behind that big bull gear (running what, I wonder? Oil pump?)
So I stand corrected; three cylinders, three cams. The head on the cylinder in the 4 o’clock position has been turned around so that the cams for the 12 and 4 positions are both in the 120 degree ‘valley’ between them, and the cam for the 8 o’clock cylinder is in the lower of the two bores in the valley between the 8 and 12 position cylinders. The upper of the two bores between those cylinder is blind, perhaps a vestigial feature from a prior design iteration, or perhaps just there for visual symmetry? All I see there is an oil drain path, and not anything else I can identify.
I’m just excited to see a manufacturer of a bespoke engine like this giving it a go. Neat little thing!
The radial engine looks cool but shows the probable reason why the Porsche Bureau rejected them – there are no real advantages to a radial in a roadgoing application and a huge one (all the more so in an off-road buggy) since the downhanging cylinders are far more vulnerable than any part of a flat engine and both more costly and complex to replace and less skidplateable than the oil pan of an inline engine.
Pro-tip: don’t google “bacon curtain” at work.
Also, the black car is a Kellison, probably a J-6.
which one: Francis or Kevin?
If only modern Lancia could capture the essence of the Flaminia.
This is a proper Lancia, not the Integrales and Stratoses everyone likes to rave about.
I went to a VW show where a guy stuck some huge Caterpillar diesel engine on the back of a Beetle. They damn near smoke screened half the show when they fired it up.
Also, I remember following the restoration of the Frink’s Dry Cleaning bus on TheSamba many years ago.
There are few vehicles more instantly identified with America than a Meyers Manx. The design is as close to timeless as car design gets and even if you have no use for or desire to own one, you can’t help but smile when one goes tooling by. It’s a happy car. I’m intrigued by that radial engine set up, so more info on that please, when you wake up.
Looking at the clearance between the heads and the road, it’s obvious why we don’t see more radial engines in land-based applications.
I think the black coupe wears a modified Kellison fiberglass body.
No telling what’s underneath. These were attached to Triumph and Austin-Healey frames, and some had SBCs.
Good-looking piece, Nicer and better proportioned, IMO, than an unmodified Kellison.
I thought Kellison as well, based on the huge rear fenders. One of my old-car-friends just brought one to our car club stand at the Copenhagen Historic Grand Prix
For a second, I was wondering why a low rider would have a portrait of Stalin painted on the edge of the door.
I am the Walrus.
My brain went nietzsche
A high school friend had a bacon-print shower curtain in his first apartment after moving out of his parent’s house. It was as garish and unpleasant as you might think, but luckily he girlfriend made him get rid of it the first time she saw it.
Lose the girlfriend.
She’s been his wife for the last couple decades, so I think he made the right call.
Well, okay then. As long as they’re happy.
He is, though I’m less sure about her. He married WAAAYYYY up, and I think she has realized she could have done better.
Me too, but luckily for me she has yet to come to her senses!
Very nice! I’m at the age where it seems like everyone we know is getting divorced, so my wife went from thinking she could do better to realizing she could have done a lot worse!
Now I want to know if the fixtures were avocado green.
That Lancia is the car from the Ian Flemming book “On her Majesty’s Service”. James Bond actually ends up engaged to the woman who drives it only to have it explode from a grenade at the end of the book.
Though I did like Tracy’s era-modernized Cougar in the movie too.