Continental Motors Company

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Continental Motors Company
legal form
founding 1905
resolution ?
Seat United States
Branch Engines

The Continental Motors Company was an American engine manufacturer. From the 1900s to the 1960s, the company produced engines for various independent manufacturers of automobiles and tractors as well as stationary engines for pumps , generators and machine drives.

Company history

Continental Motors was founded in 1905 and manufactured a side-controlled four-cylinder four-stroke engine with a single camshaft .

In 1906 the engine type “O” with 45 bhp (34 kW) was developed for the propulsion of airplanes.

1929, a 7-cylinder was Sternmotor introduced with 8,913 cc, of 170 bhp (127 kW) at 2000 min -1 made.

In August 1929, the Continental Aircraft Engine Company was spun off from the Continental Motors Company to develop and build aircraft engines . This later became the main business of the successor company Teledyne Continental Motors .

Continental Motors began manufacturing automobiles more indirectly. In the 1910s and 1920s, engines were manufactured for a number of independent automobile manufacturers, such as the Durant Motors Corporation, which used Continental engines in its Star, Durant, Flint and Rugby series.

De Vaux, Continental De Vaux, and Continental Automobile Company

In the wake of the economic crisis, automobile sales collapsed in the early 1930s. As a result, engine sales also fell sharply. The company tried to compensate for this by buying a car manufacturer that they wanted to supply with in-house engines. The choice fell on the badly ailing De Vaux in Grand Rapids (Michigan) whose mid-range models with their own engine could not be sold in sufficient numbers. De Vaux, for its part, had emerged from parts of the Durant Motors group and the only Model 6/70 was an only slightly modified version of the last Durant. This constellation was advantageous for Continental because the vehicle could easily be equipped with a Continental engine again. In February 1932, Continental took over the De Vaux Motors Company. For the rest of the model year, the externally unchanged car with the in-house engine was sold as the Continental De Vaux 6/80 . The company was renamed the Continental Automobile Company in November 1932. There were now three series, the six-cylinder Ace and Flyer , as well as the cheaper Beacon with four cylinders. None of these series sold particularly well during the economic crisis. At the same time, the Canadian company Dominion Motors Ltd. the Flyer and Beacon trolleys as Frontenac C-600 resp. C-400 under license for the Canadian market. The larger ace was imported from the USA. Dominion then turned to building Reo trucks. Production of the Ace and Flyer models was discontinued at the end of 1933. Since Continental was also unable to make a profit with the Beacon, the construction of this last model was also stopped in 1934.

Land vehicles with Continental engines

Continental 6L-226 six-cylinder engine for Kaiser, Frazer and various vehicles from Checker, Willys and IKA (front view)

Aircraft engines

Continental TD300 diesel aircraft engine (prototype)

In 1929 the aircraft engine business was outsourced as the Continental Aircraft Engine Company and in 1969 it was taken over by Teledyne Technologies . Teledyne Continental became Lycoming’s main competitor in the aero engine market for general aviation . Some of these types of engines were also built under license by Rolls-Royce.

literature

  • Christopher Foss: Jane's Pocket Book of Modern Tanks and Amored Fighting Vehicles. Collier Books, 1974, pp. 45-49. (English)
  • Beverly Ray Kimes, Henry Austin Clark jr: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. Krause Publications, Iola WI 1985, ISBN 0-87341-045-9 . (English)
  • Walter MP McCall: Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Fire Engine Manufacturers. Iconografix, Hudson WI 2009, ISBN 978-1-58388-252-8 (English).
  • Griffith Borgeson: The Golden Age of the American Racing Car. 2nd Edition. Published by SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers), Warrendale PA 1998, ISBN 0-7680-0023-8 . (English)
  • G. Marshall Naul, R. Parry Zavitz (Eds.): The Specification Book For US Cars 1930-1969. Motorbooks International, 1980, ISBN 0-87938-068-3 . (English)
  • Jerry Heasley: The Production Figure Book For US Cars. Motorbooks International, 1977, ISBN 0-87938-042-X . (English)
  • GN Georgano (Ed.): Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars, 1885 to the Present. 2nd Edition. Dutton Press, New York 1973, ISBN 0-525-08351-0 . (English)

Web links

Commons : Continental Motors  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Chester L. Peek: Flying With 40 Horses. ( Memento from December 11, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Book about the history of the Continental A-40, the engine that revived the aircraft industry in the USA after the Great Depression

Individual evidence

  1. ^ F. Richard Leyes, William A. Fleming: The History of the North American Small Gas Turbine Aircraft Engines. Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 1999, ISBN 1-56347-332-1 , p. 87.
  2. ↑ BR Kimes, HA Clark jr: Catalog of American Cars. 1985, p. 131.
  3. ↑ BR Kimes, HA Clark jr: Catalog of American Cars. 1985, p. 351.
  4. ↑ BR Kimes, HA Clark jr: Catalog of American Cars. 1985, p. 434.
  5. ↑ BR Kimes, HA Clark jr: Catalog of American Cars. 1985, p. 689.
  6. ↑ BR Kimes, HA Clark jr: Catalog of American Cars. 1985, p. 754.
  7. ↑ BR Kimes, HA Clark jr: Catalog of American Cars. 1985, pp. 756-758.
  8. ↑ a b trombinoscar.com: Lippard-Stewart .
  9. ^ W. MP McCall: Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Fire Engine Manufacturers. 2009, p. 154.
  10. ↑ BR Kimes, HA Clark jr: Catalog of American Cars. 1985, pp. 1275, 130.
  11. ↑ BR Kimes, HA Clark jr: Catalog of American Cars. 1985, p. 1239.
  12. ↑ BR Kimes, HA Clark jr: Catalog of American Cars. 1985, pp. 1239, 1513-1514.