Minerva Motors

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1931 Minerva type AL Rollston
Part Sociale of Minerva Motors SA from February 19, 1929

Minerva was a Belgian manufacturer of luxury cars between 1902 and 1938.

The Belgian Sylvain de Jong (1868–1928) founded the Minerva bicycle factory in Antwerp in 1897 . In 1900 he began to mount a 3 or 4 hp Swiss single-cylinder engine from the Zedel brand on his bicycles. After acquiring a license from the Swiss engineers H. Lüthi and E. Zürcher (they had developed a 211 cm³ engine), he began building motorcycles . Their engines, along with the tank and ignition, were arranged at an angle under the tubular frame. Its carburetor operated through a touchpad. The motorcycle was driven by a twisted, round leather belt . The leather strap transmitted the movement of the engine pulley to another larger diameter pulley attached to the rear wheel spokes of the bicycle. This connection became known as the Minerva position. The Minerva motorcycles quickly gained a good reputation for their reliability and victories on the Zurenborg racetrack. Thanks to the lively demand, the company grew quickly and was relocated to new buildings.

Light automobiles

Minervette A.
Minervette chassis 1906

After trials with light automobiles, small vehicles with single cylinder engines were produced for a few years, which were given the name Minervette. In 1902 a 6-CV four-cylinder model was added. In 1903 de Jong founded NV Minerva Motors in Berchem near Antwerp . In 1904 he started manufacturing models with two , three and four-cylinder engines with chain drives and metal-clad wooden frames. In 1907 , Minerva racing cars took the first three places in the Ardennes race for Kaiserpreis vehicles. After this triple victory by John Moore-Brabazon , Sytse Frederick Willem Koolhoven and Kenelm Lee Guinness with the 8-liter car, de Jong finally devoted himself to building luxurious, large-volume cars and stopped producing bicycles and motorcycles.

Charles Rolls , who later co-founded the Rolls-Royce company , began selling the 14 CV 2.9 liter Minerva in England , which became an important market apart from the Netherlands , France and Switzerland. At £ 105, the Minervette was the cheapest car on the UK market at 636cc.

In 1908, Minerva acquired a worldwide license for the American Charles Yale Knight's double vane engine . These engines ran extremely smoothly and quietly. In addition to Minerva, the British Daimler and the French Panhard & Levassor also built engines of this design. All future Minervas stayed with this unit, and valve motors disappeared from the program, which was to have fateful consequences for Minerva. At the Austrian Alpine competitions and the Swedish winter competitions, sporting success quickly set in with the new engine. In addition to the 6.5-liter engine, one with 2.5 and one with 4.5-liter displacement was soon part of the Minerva range. The kings of Belgium, Sweden and Norway and Henry Ford were among the most famous customers of the prestigious brand .

Luxury car

When most cars still had a crank to start them, Minerva installed electric starters and lighting on request . In addition to the primitive leaf springs , Minervas already had shock absorbers and spiral-toothed rear axle angular drives.

Minerva NN

Minerva OO

At the outbreak of the First World War , lightly armored personnel carriers and mitrailleuses for the Belgian military with large-volume 7-liter engines were installed in the heavy chassis in a feverish hurry before the German troops marched in. During the war, the engineers and de Jong fled to Amsterdam in the neutral Netherlands, where they developed components and prepared to return after the war. In 1920 Minerva resumed the production of luxury cars with the type NN , a 20 CV 3.6-liter monobloc four-cylinder model and the type OO , a 30 CV 5.3-liter six-cylinder model. Proven pre-war construction elements such as immersion lubrication, cooling , magneto ignition, cone clutch and setting four-speed transmission , however, remained largely unchanged. The engines had a crankshaft with seven bearings . American movie stars, politicians and industrialists liked the vehicles. They were of the same high quality as Rolls-Royce made famous, but were a little cheaper.

Minerva AG

As early as 1922, a smaller AG four-cylinder model was presented, followed in 1923 by a four-cylinder model with a 15 CV 2 liter engine, the output of which was specified as 55 hp and which thus reached 80 km / h. There was also a 3.4-liter six-cylinder 20 CV, which was equipped with brakes on the front and rear wheels and a dry multi-disc clutch. His handbrake acted on the transmission and the vehicle reached a top speed of 100 km / h with 82 hp. In 1924 de Jong donated two more cylinders to the four-cylinder engine and on this basis presented the new six-cylinder AB model . In 1925 the AF model came on the market with a 5.3-liter six-cylinder engine, which was already specified with 100 hp. In a total of 15,500 passenger cars in Switzerland at that time there were 224 of the Minerva brand, which gained a great reputation for winning reliability rides, especially the Swiss Alpine Tour.

Minerva AK

Minerva AK

In 1927 the 30 CV was replaced by the AK model with a 6-liter engine, as was the smaller 2-liter 15 CV model by the AH 12/14 model with a 2-liter six-cylinder engine. The new models were equipped with Dewandre vacuum servo brakes and cantilever springs on the rear wheels. The stately AK was mentioned in the same breath as Rolls-Royce, Hispano-Suiza , Voisin and Maybach because of its high quality, reliability and comfort . Despite the death of de Jong in 1928, large luxury vehicles remained the specialty of the company, which employed 4,300 people in the production of engines, chassis, and bodywork for cars and trucks and manufactured a total of around 2,000 vehicles in the 1920s.

Minerva AL

Minerva AR

In 1930 the AL models with a 6.6-liter engine and the AP with a 4-liter unit were introduced. Following the spirit of the times and the wishes of its customers, Minerva also presented the 6-liter, six-cylinder AKS model, its 150 hp, sporty top model, which was also known as the Speed ​​Six and reached a top speed of 150 km / h, one of which is a specimen in the Deutsches Museum in Munich . With a 6.6-liter in-line eight-cylinder, another top model was added under the name AL . The six-cylinder AB model was replaced by the AE 20 HP with 55 hp and the OO model by the AF 30 HP with 75 hp, which despite its two-tonne total weight could accelerate to 130 km / h thanks to its high torque. In 1932 the AR was presented as the smallest model with an in-line six-cylinder engine with a displacement of 3 liters.

Cycles

Minerva also made bicycles over time. Racing bikes were built from tube sets from the Italian tube maker Columbus Tubi . Today, Minerva bikes are sold again. These are aluminum trekking and city bikes.

Economic crisis

The last model was the M4 with a 2-liter four-cylinder engine presented in 1934 , which did not sell well. Because of the high reliability of the Knight valve engines, Minerva developed a V-12 aircraft engine with a displacement of 9.4 liters and an output of 150 hp. Because of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the company was reformed under the Société Nouvelle Minerva company , the New York sales office was closed, the London branch was reorganized and in 1936 it was merged with the other Belgian designer, Imperia . Imperia manufactured Minervas for another year and the AP model until 1938. For export to England and France, the cars and trucks were marked as Minerva-Imperias.

Second World War

During the war, the business premises served as a branch of the Erla machine works , in which Bf 109s were repaired. On April 8, 1943, it was the target of a bombardment that resulted in civilian casualties.

Cooperation with Land Rover

Minerva Land Rover

After the Second World War , the company produced the British Land Rover under license for the Belgian army until 1953 . There were plans to re-enter the passenger car market, but they never got beyond the prototype stage . Fighting for survival, the company manufactured the Land Rover C20 powered by a Continental engine until 1956 .

Even today there are some Minerva in drivable condition around the world.

Web links

Commons : Minerva  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1907 Grands Prix. (No longer available online.) Www.teamdan.com, archived from the original on December 14, 2018 ; accessed on February 12, 2020 (English).