Weller Four Seat Tourer

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Weller
Weller Four Seat Tourer (20 hp)
Weller Four Seat Tourer (20 hp)
Four seat tourer
Production period: 1903
Class : Upper class
Body versions : Touring car
Engines:
Petrol engines : 2.0-4.0 liters
(8-15 kW)
Length:
Width:
Height:
Wheelbase :
Empty weight :
successor Car carrier (tricycle pickup truck)

The Weller Four Seat Tourer (also Weller 10hp Touring Car or Weller 20hp Touring Car or simply Weller Car , link to the picture :) was an open four-seat touring car of the upper class , which was presented at the British International Motor Show in early 1903 .

The vehicle was built by Weller Brothers Ltd. based in West Norwood , England , now a southern part of London ; It was developed by the automobile and motorcycle pioneer John Weller with financial support from the businessman John Portwine, both partners in this company (initially together with three other Weller brothers). The vehicle had a self-designed and self-built four-stroke in - line engine with either two or four cylinders . Today, even if it was presented under the name Weller and remained a one-off, it is the starting point of the English automobile brand AC Cars, which has now more than a hundred years of history.

introduction

The Weller Four Seat Tourer was the first completely self-planned automobile that the engineer John Weller and the patron John Portwine built in their company. The experience gained in this way was incorporated into various series vehicles from 1904 onwards, from which the car brand AC Cars emerged ; This was based in Thames Ditton in Surrey from 1911 to 1984 , celebrated its greatest successes with the legendary AC Cobra in the 1960s together with Carroll Shelby and Ford and exists - albeit with several changes of ownership in the 1980s and 1990s - to this day.

The elaborate, sporty touring car ultimately remained a one-off because there was no additional funding for series production.

The term Weller 10hp touring car and Weller 20hp touring car refers to "10HP" or "20hp" on the engine power in the unit of horsepower ( horsepower ). Since there were still no suitable dynamometers, the information is probably based on early abstract performance formulas.

History of origin

contemporary, similar in style and concept to the Weller Tourer , but smaller, De Dion-Bouton 8CV from 1903

The first preparatory work for the Four Seat Tourer began in April 1901. John Weller brought in the experience he had previously gained as a motor vehicle mechanic and engine technician, especially in the workshop that he had operated alone with his brother Harry in West Norwood since 1899. There they mainly took care of the maintenance and repair of motorcycles, motorized tricycles and automobiles, both steam-powered and gasoline-powered, especially De Dion-Bouton vehicles and those with built-in engines of this brand.

Weller had specific ideas on how he could improve the vehicle technology that was common at the time and wanted to implement his innovative ideas in a luxury-class model, which at the time - also in England - was primarily from French brands such as De Dion-Bouton , Peugeot and Renault or the German Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft with its car brand Mercedes was dominated. There was hardly any competition from the UK, in particular the automobile manufacturer Rolls-Royce did not come into existence until 1904.

The Weller Four Seat Tourer oriented itself conceptually and in terms of style to contemporary, but smaller De Dion-Bouton -models, so the 1902 published cylinder 8CV Type K and the 1903 released 1.7-liter two-cylinder 12cv Type S (a four-cylinder followed at De Dion-Bouton only in 1904 with the 2.5-l model 15CV Type AD and the even more powerful 24CV Type AI ). The construction of the vehicle was slow, as Weller had to design most of the individual parts himself and manufacture them individually in his workshop. Furthermore, Weller could only use the time that was left to him in addition to the regular, priority workshop jobs of the customers. The funds for the construction of the touring car also had to be secured, for example from the ongoing operation of the workshop and financial additions from his partner Portwine, who ran his own butcher's chain with branches in London and the surrounding area.

The Weller Brothers Ltd. finally presented the vehicle at the British Motor Show in January and February 1903, which was held at Crystal Palace in the Sydenham district in south London just a few kilometers from the Weller workshop in West Norwood. The vehicle, which was not yet ready to drive, was exhibited with the self-designed and self-built 20hp four-cylinder engine and the smaller 10hp two-cylinder engine. The two owners and managing directors Weller and Portwine wanted to sound out the interest of the press and the public for a possible series production and, if necessary, to find further donors and sales partners.

The vehicle was praised as progressive and well thought-out, but - especially since test drives were not yet possible - there were no serious buyers or other donors. The success of its butcher chain enabled Portwine to at least provide John Weller with the funds to complete the Four Seat Tourer . The completed vehicle was finally presented in the 20hp four-cylinder version in the June 6, 1903 issue of The Autocar magazine , and was enthusiastically praised with the following tenor:

"We foresee a brilliant future for the Weller car and its talented designer."

“We foresee a bright future for the Weller car and its talented designer.”

Royce 10 or Rolls-Royce 10 hp - the model that the businessman Charles Rolls helped to series production in 1904 instead of the Weller Four Seat Tourer

This encouraged Weller to intensify the search for further donors for the intended series production of the touring car in 1903. In doing so, he almost prevented the creation of the legendary Rolls-Royce automobile brand : in 1903/1904 he met with Charles Rolls , among others , in order to secure his financial support and sales contacts. Rolls was impressed by Weller's innovative, sporty four-seat tourer , but also had concerns about the readiness for series production of individual detailed solutions; Rolls therefore met with the designer of another luxury vehicle: On May 4, 1904, the - from today's perspective - historic meeting between Rolls and the more conservative automobile pioneer Henry Royce took place in the Midland Hotel in Manchester, followed by a test drive in the new Royce 10 ; Rolls and Royce then sealed their further cooperation, initially with a handshake, then on December 23, 1904 with a written contract.

Wellers and Portwine's further search for additional donors for series production was unsuccessful. The Four Seat Tourer turned out to be technically well thought out, but too expensive for series production. Portwine therefore convinced Weller to design a smaller, technically simpler and thus more cost-effective vehicle for commercial purposes, for which he saw better marketing opportunities. In 1904, Autocars and Accessories Ltd., which also belongs to Portwine and Weller, was created . ( A. and A. ) in the London borough of Long Acre the three-wheeled pickup truck Auto-Carrier , which subsequently developed into a great sales success and paved the way for the AC Cars car brand .

Vehicle model details

Chassis and running gear

With a ladder frame as well as rigid axles and leaf springs at the front and rear, the Weller Four Seat Tourer corresponded to the then common model. The wheelbase was unusually long for the time; The chassis was also noticeably low, which resulted in a comparatively low center of gravity.

A special feature was a subframe that accommodated the engine including the exhaust and cooler as well as the gearbox (with final drive via chain). Weller's goal was to decouple the chassis (with its torsional forces occurring while driving) and the drive train (with its still strong engine vibrations, which is typical of the time): By diverting the torsional forces into the subframe, the drive train was to be relieved and material fatigue prevented; conversely, the subframe should absorb some of the engine vibrations in order to relieve the load on the chassis, chassis and body and to increase passenger comfort.

With his idea, Weller anticipated the basic principles of the lattice frame or the space framework , which only later became established in automobile construction. In fact, at that time the higher manufacturing costs and the additional weight alone spoke against his solution, which was insignificant in practice in view of the generally high manufacturing costs and the powerful motorization. The principle of the space frame found at Weller later constructions again, starting from 1904 when small loads tricycle car carrier and from 1907 in which derived therefrom two- or three-seat Cyclecar AC Sociable .

According to one source, the chassis is said to have already been made of light metal.

The Four Seat Tourer was steered by a steering wheel that was still relatively steep , while Weller returned to a simple lever mechanism for the later Auto-Carrier and AC Sociable . Weller paid particular attention to the steering mechanics of the Four Seat Tourer and its geometry: he used the stub axle steering , as it had been developed independently in 1816 by Georg Lankensperger , in 1875 by Amédée Bollée and in 1891 by Carl Benz , but changed the mechanical load on the steering pin further decrease when cornering.

For the large touring car, Weller used balloon tires on conventional wooden spoke wheels (so-called "Artillery Wheels") with 12 spokes at the front and - due to the higher weight load on the rear axle - 14 spokes at the rear.

engine and gears

The drive of the Weller Four Seat Tourer basically followed the model that was common for luxury vehicles at the time. The engine was an advanced, water-cooled four - stroke petrol engine with either two or four cylinders in a row, installed as a front engine behind the front axle with drive on the rear wheels. As is typical of the time, the engine had a camshaft below with inlet and outlet valves at the side ( SV valve control ); the valves were operated mechanically, i.e. in the form of a forced control . The SV valve control resulted in a comparatively low overall height of the engine with a very simple design of the cylinder heads - despite the relatively large displacement.

A special feature of the 10hp two-cylinder and the 20hp four-cylinder was their modular design with individual cylinders; Weller followed a common parts strategy at an early stage : for both engine variants as many parts as possible, such as connecting rods, pistons, cylinders, cylinder heads, valves, etc. were identical, only the crankshaft housing as well as the crankshaft and camshaft differed in both versions due to their different lengths. A three-cylinder version, as it was popular with customers of competing models at the time, was planned as a 15hp model, as was a small version with 8hp; a six-cylinder version with 30hp could have been added if necessary. In contrast, Henry Royce and Rolls-Royce used cylinders cast in pairs for the 10 hp , 20 hp and 30 hp models in the following year ; Henry Royce therefore had to design and produce new cylinders for the 15 hp three-cylinder model that appeared in 1905 , which is why this was withdrawn from the range in the same year, despite good market opportunities.

Exact engine data are not available for the Weller engines. The performance data and the probably underlying abstract performance formula, however, allow a conclusion to be drawn about a bore of around 4 inches = 101.6 millimeters, as used by Rolls-Royce in its engines introduced in 1904 and 1905. According to the long-stroke design customary in England at the time, the cylinder stroke should have been around 4½ to 5 inches (114.3 to 127 millimeters); the 10hp two-cylinder would have had a displacement of around two liters - similar to the Rolls-Royce 10 hp that appeared shortly afterwards - and the 20hp four-cylinder around four liters. Analogous to the Rolls-Royce models that appeared a little later, the power of the two-cylinder model was likely to have been around 8 kW / 11 hp , that of the four-cylinder model around 15 kW / 20 hp (the abstractly determined power values ​​and the actual power in hp were still close at the time together).

Another innovation from Wellers was an elastic connection piece between the clutch and the gearbox , also supported by the aim of keeping engine vibrations away from the rest of the vehicle. The final drive was by chain; On the one hand, this was considered to be more robust at the time - at least for powerful vehicles - compared to a cardan shaft ; on the other hand, this also corresponded to Weller's concept of decoupling the drive train and chassis as effectively as possible and thus preventing the mutual transmission of forces and vibrations.

Body and equipment

The body of the Weller Four Seat Tourer basically corresponded to the classic image of a four-seat touring car, but thanks to the deep chassis it was comparatively low and elongated for its time, which made it look elegant and sporty. As with the motorcycle, special weather protection was deemed unnecessary, which is why the vehicle had neither side doors, nor a windshield, nor a hood. Since the roads were often still unpaved at the beginning of the 20th century, wide fixed front and elongated rear fenders (with treads for easier access to the front seats) served as protection, as did a vertical bulkhead with rounded sides between the engine compartment and passenger compartment.

According to one source, in addition to the chassis, the body panels were also made of light metal.

The design was based more on contemporary French vehicles from De Dion-Bouton , Peugeot and Renault than on English models. What was striking was a rather graceful, sloping, sporty-looking front without a radiator grille (the radiator was located deep in front of the front axle between the foothills of the leaf springs) and a narrow, flat, slightly rising bonnet with numerous, sloping ventilation slots on the side panel. Additional decorative elements, probably brass fittings typical of the time , made the bonnet appear even flatter and longer. The front of the vehicle was very similar to contemporary De Dion-Bouton and Peugeot models or, in this respect, almost identical designs from brands that are hardly known today such as Achilles , Aster , Clément , Clément-Bayard , Darracq , Minerva etc. taken over there, as Weller Brothers Ltd. primarily took care of the maintenance and repair of such vehicles.

The Weller Four Seat Tourer had four lavishly upholstered individual seats in the form of semicircular bucket seats; The two rear seats were not entered from the side, as is common today, but via a narrow approach in the rear of the vehicle, as was also used by De Dion-Bouton on individual Phaeton models from 1902 onwards. Two carbide lamps with brass housings on the right and left side of the bulkhead and a large signal horn mounted next to the steering wheel were also typical .

The whereabouts of the vehicle and further development of the brand

After Weller and Portwine could not find any additional financiers for series production of the Four Seat Tourer , they gave up the idea of ​​manufacturing a luxury vehicle, especially since shortly afterwards Rolls-Royce with the two, three, four and six-cylinder models 10 hp , 15 hp , 20 hp, and 30 hp served this limited market. In particular, Weller and Portwine lacked the good reputation that could have been achieved through sporting success or proven predecessor models. An export would not have been very promising either, since automobile pioneers in France, the USA and Germany implemented comparable vehicle concepts in the luxury class with less cost-intensive detailed solutions. From France, for example, the De Dion-Bouton, which Weller took as a model, was also available with a four-cylinder engine from 1904, and from Germany the Mercedes-Simplex . The Dixi company, which later became part of BMW, pursued a concept similar to that of Weller in Germany with the models T 12 , T 13 and T 14 (built in 1904–1907, 2 cyl., 2471 cm³, bore × stroke 110 × 130 mm, 12-17 PS, 60 copies) and Dixi T 24 (1904–1905, 4 cyl., 4942 cm³, bore × stroke 110 × 130 mm, 32 PS, chain drive, 5 copies).

The whereabouts of the Weller Four-Seat Tourer single item after 1904 is unclear, in particular it has not been established whether Weller or Portwine used or sold it themselves; it was probably later dismantled or scrapped. A possible lead can be found in a letter to the editor in The Autocar magazine from 1952: In it, there is a contemporary witness who was in contact with Felix W. Hudlass, a former Weller employee, and who had described the Weller car in more detail. his knowledge again. At a scrap yard in Whetstone, England, he claims to have seen various rare vehicles from the time before the First World War in 1919 , including the Weller car , a Scottish Kelvin , a Brotherhood and a Phoenix with a transverse engine; possibly the vehicle named by him is one of the rare Hitchon-Weller cars, also built with the participation of John Weller from 1904 to 1907 , which was occasionally referred to as the "Weller Car", but was officially sold under the brand name Globe .

Only a single black-and-white photograph of the Weller Four Seat Tourer has survived, and it has survived in the archive of the AC factory. It shows him in a side view from the right and can be found in individual specialist books and on several websites.

The construction of the elaborate, representative Weller Four Seat Tourer and the attempts to market it were carried out by Weller Brothers Ltd. financially and temporally very heavily burdened; the financier and ultimately sole owner John Portwine therefore decided to voluntarily liquidate this company in 1904. The company, possibly also the Weller Tourer , was taken over by the company Douglas S. Cox & Co. , also based in West Norwood , which had previously briefly manufactured its own vehicles under the brand name Emerald from 1903 to 1904 . Portwine and Weller turned to their other company Autocars & Accessories Ltd. initially smaller, simpler vehicles for commercial use. Both worked together in this until 1922, in 1907 to Autocarriers Ltd. renamed and in 1911 relocated to Thames Ditton in Surrey, which later became the famous sports car manufacturer AC Cars . Under her leadership, the three-wheeled van Auto-Carrier came into being from 1904 , from 1907 the two or three-seater AC Sociable based on it , from 1913 the light, four- wheel AC 10 hp with Fivet four-cylinder engine (also called AC Fivet ) and from 1920 the AC 12 hp four-cylinder from the British Anzani Motor Company ; Furthermore, during the First World War, Weller developed the pioneering 2.0-liter in-line six-cylinder engine with a light metal block and overhead camshaft, which in the following years contributed significantly to the rise of AC to a manufacturer of exclusive sporty utility cars and which was built with constant further developments until 1963.

There was an open, four-seater touring car under Weller and Portwine only in the early 1920s with the AC 12 hp ; shortly before they left, they put this additional body variant to the side for the two-seater tourer and two-seater sports car. Because of the higher weight, this version remained comparatively unpopular in the relatively small, light 1.5-liter car. The Four Seat Tourer version only found widespread use from 1922 to 1939 in the AC Six model series with slightly larger bodies and significantly more power (models 16hp , then 16/40 , later as 16/56 and 16/66 and finally as 16 / 60 , 16/70 and 16/80 ). After the Second World War , AC revived the concept of the four-seater touring car from 1949 to 1953 with the Buckland Tourer , a variant of the AC 2-liter , which was built around 75 times , as well as an upper middle class model like the pre-war models from the Six series .

In the car class ventured AC center again until the 1960s with the model AC 428 , the two-seat convertible (introduced in 1965) and two-seat fastback - Coupe (introduced in 1967) with brands such as Aston Martin , Bentley , Bristol and Jensen competed.

literature

  • John McLellan: Classic ACs . Sutton Publishing Ltd., Stroud, Gloucestershire 2000, ISBN 978-0-7509-2042-1 (especially pp. 1 and 2 (with picture) (English)).
  • GN Georgano, Thorkil Ry Andersen: The new encyclopedia of motorcars, 1885 to the present . Dutton, New York 1982, ISBN 0-525-93254-2 (keywords: AC and Globe (English)).
  • Nick Baldwin, GN Georgano, Michael Sedgwick, and Brian Laban: The World Guide to Automobile Manufacturers . Facts on File, New York 1987, ISBN 0-8160-1844-8 (p. 10, keyword: AC (English)).
  • St. John, C. Nixon: The antique automobile . Cassell & Co., London 1956 (ISBN not available, p. 100 (text) and between 172 and 173 (image) (English)).
  • Trevor Legate: Cobra: The First 40 Years . MBI Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA 2006, ISBN 978-0-7603-2423-3 (p. 14 (English)).
  • NN in: "Autocar" (magazine), The Weller Twenty Horsepower Car , issue June 6, 1903 (English)

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ a b c Brief description of the vehicle with picture on the AC Heritage website ( Memento from August 31, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Reproduction of the AC press release on the 100th anniversary (with Weller company and model history) (English)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.carpictures.com  
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i John McLellan, Classic ACs . Sutton Publishing Ltd., Stroud, Gloucestershire 2000, ISBN 978-0-7509-2042-1 , especially pp. 1 and 2 (English)
  4. ↑ NN in: "The Autocar" (magazine), edition of June 6, 1903 (English)
  5. ↑ a b AC company history on the website of AC Autokraft, an AC successor company (English)
  6. ↑ Felix W. Hudlass in: "Motor sport" (magazine), July 1962, p. 528 (letter to the editor from the former Weller employee Hudlass - English)
  7. ↑ AC company history (with pictures) and technical aspects of the Weller Four Seat Tourer (English)
  8. ↑ a b N.N. in: The Motor , issue 113, 1958, page 646 (English)
  9. ↑ United States. Bureau of Manufactures, Bureau of Foreign Commerce, Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of Statistics, Monthly consular and trade reports, Volume 74, Issues 280–282, 1904, p. 433 (English)
  10. ^ Institution of Automobile Engineers, Proceedings of the session ..., Volume 3, Page 345 (English)
  11. ↑ NN in: "Motor transport", 1909, Volume 8, page 337 (English)
  12. ^ Stanley Spooner (ed.), The Auto: the motorist's pictorial , 1909, Volume 14, Page 998 (English)
  13. ^ Werner Oswald, Eberhard Kittler, All BMW Automobile , 1st edition, 2000, Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart, ISBN 3-613-02080-7 , pp. 11-15
  14. ^ Henry Sturmey, H. Walter Staner (eds.); T. Cordery in: "The Autocar", Volume 97, 1952, page 1698 (English)
  15. ^ GN Georgano, Thorkil Ry Andersen, The New encyclopedia of motorcars, 1885 to the present . Dutton, New York 1982, ISBN 0-525-93254-2 , 1982, p. 688, keyword: Emerald (English)