Which engine layout would be best suited for a family of rear-engined British People's Cars?

The most suitable engine layout for a rear-engined family of British People's Cars

  • Inline (e.g. Renault, Fiat, Skoda, NSU, etc)

    Votes: 3 30.0%

  • Flat (e.g. Volkswagen, Porsche, BMW, etc)

    Votes: 5 50.0%

  • Vee (e.g. ZAZ, Tatra, etc)

    Votes: 2 20.0%
  • Total voters
    10

Masked Grizzly

To add a bit context this is inspired by an old thread on the subject of a State-owned / Co-Operative UK People's Carmaker, one which is built from the ground up without necessitating taking over or nationalizing other UK carmakers.

On the one hand this company would be considered a British version of Volkswagen (or to a lesser extent even post-war Renault), like Volkswagen they would want to basically get the out of little and that leads to the question of which engine layout should such a company adopt for building a family of rear-engined cars.

The Inline engine can be either air-cooled or water-cooled and has been a common engine layout used by the likes of Renault (plus Alpine), Fiat, Simca, Skoda, NSU, Hino, Hillman (see Imp) and Subaru (see 360).

The Flat engine can easily be copied off of the post-war Volkswagen Beetle in addition to acquiring the services of Ferdinand Porsche for free as war-reparations, in addition to Volkswagen and Porsche. This engine layout has also been used by BMW (see 600 and 700) as well as Chevrolet (see Corvair).

The Vee engine would appeal to those within the company and certain parties in government by allowing it to focus on exporting its cars to other countries like the US, particularly in Tatra V8 inspired form. While the 90-degree V8 at the same time can also form the basis of related V2 (e.g. Mazda R360), V4 (e.g. ZAZ Zaporozhets) and V6 engines.

Another variation of the Vee engine would be related family derived from a 120-degree V6, similar to what Porsche proposed with the Studebaker-Porsche Project 542 (in both water-cooled and air-cooled forms).
 
Ogrebear

Ogrebear

I'd suggest the Inline engine type is most likely as it seems to have been used by several UK manufacturers already, though if you can get Porsche over then def Flat engine!
 

sonofpegasus

Depending on when, I would suggest the traverse four cylinder style as used in the Mini, Maxi and other cars. Get Alec Issigonis to design it but make it a bit bigger than the Mini.
 

Masked Grizzly

To clarify the engine layout is intended for a family of rear-engined cars, sold both domestically as well as exported to other countries.
 

sonofpegasus

why rear engine? Are you trying to clone the Beetle? Front engine/ front drive id more flexible design wise, enabling many variants to be built using the same Chassis/floor pan/sub-frame of your choice.
 

Masked Grizzly

sonofpegasus said:
why rear engine? Are you trying to clone the Beetle? Front engine/ front drive id more flexible design wise, enabling many variants to be built using the same Chassis/floor pan/sub-frame of your choice.
Click to expand...

Yes, this ATL company is basically a post-war government-backed British analogue of Volkswagen with elements of Porsche and Tatra at its peak. Even down to embracing a rear-engined layout up to the early/mid-1970s, WITHOUT simply acquiring the rights to the Beetle as war reparations (that was an option in OTL).

Think of it as a rough British equivalent of Volkswagen, which never had any British analogues of NSU or DKW to acquire (whose technologies helped lay the groundwork for Volkswagen's FWD transformation in the 1970s).
 

tomo pauk

sonofpegasus said:
why rear engine? Are you trying to clone the Beetle? Front engine/ front drive id more flexible design wise, enabling many variants to be built using the same Chassis/floor pan/sub-frame of your choice.
Click to expand...

+1 on this.
You can have station-wagon, a van, pick-up far easier to design & produce. More useful volume for same external volume.
Was the title changed in the meantime?
 
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Masked Grizzly

In the post-war period up to the 1960s with the rise of FWD, rear-engined rear-wheel drive cars were a common layout. Being this is a government-backed post-war British carmaker, it is likely such a company would have been influenced by the rear-engine Beetle as was the case with Renault, Fiat and others, along with being significantly cheaper to produce compared to a front-engined front-wheel drive car (as Dante Giacosa experienced at Fiat during the development of the post-war Fiat 600).
 
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tomo pauk

Is there a sourced information on how much the layout will drive the price, vs. how much the engine choice (say, 2 cyl air cooled vs. 4 cyl water-cooled) will?
But, at any rate, you are in charge here.
 

Masked Grizzly

tomo pauk said:
Is there a sourced information on how much the layout will drive the price, vs. how much the engine choice (say, 2 cyl air cooled vs. 4 cyl water-cooled) will?
But, at any rate, you are in charge here.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately no.

Given the POD air-cooling is likely initially, the question is down to which engine layout would allow the company to maximize the number of related derivatives with various number of cylinders.

A number of rear-engined cars featuring an Inline engine layout were limited to 2/4-cylinders, so the largest model would likely make do with a 2-litre 4-cylinder.

The likes of BMW, Chevrolet (via Corvair), Volkswagen and Porsche which featured a Flat rear-engine layout were capable of being ranging from 2-cylinders to 6-cylinders. While Porsche is a notable user of the Flat-6 (and was even used in the Corvair/Tatra-like Volkswagen EA128 prototype), Volkswagen did contract Oettinger to develop a Flat-6 version of the Wasserboxer for the Volkswagen T3 (called the Oettinger WBX6) in OTL at one point (not to mention the Volkswagen Porsche B32).

As for the Vee engine layout, Mazda, ZAZ and Tatra are notable 2/4/8-cylinder examples of rear-engined cars with such a layout and all being 90-degree air-cooled designs.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
Not British, but there might be something in using the something like the aircooled F-6 Chevy Corvair engine in front, linked to a Pontiac Tempest swing arm transaxle in the rear, so you get the advantage of better cooling, 'Cab Forward' to maximize interior space with no transmission hump and have better weight distribution, plus allow more freedom to make van/hatchback/pickup/sedan bodies
 

Masked Grizzly

Despite the limitations of the rear-engined layout with regards to bodystyles, carmakers did manage to develop rear-engined van/pick-up/estate//hatchback/etc variants in OTL (albeit not without difficultly and likely requiring a Volkswagen Type 3 pancake layout for a British hatchback version of the Beetle).

That is not to mention Volkswagen's stillborn mid-rear-engine EA266 prototype that was to spawn a family of cars had it not been cancelled. - https://jalopnik.com/this-fascinating-stillborn-vw-prototype-would-have-been-1675948679

Interestingly Pinterest has an image of a sleek looking Hillman Imp estate prototype, which lost out to the Hillman Husky Van in OTL.
 
Ogrebear

Ogrebear

It would be hard to imagine a British govt post war thatvset this proposed company up. More likely they would force several smaller players to merge and then order them to make a ‘people’s car’.

Your going to set something very British from the design using the existing ideas and layout unless you get someone radical involved with the authority to do something very new.
 

Masked Grizzly

A viable version Sir Roy Fedden's Car project would be a start together with backing of Stafford Cripps (one of the notable proponents of a UK People's Car in government), complete with Wolfsburg-like works town located at Stoke Orchard in Gloucestershire and adopting Denis Kendall’s idea of using the Co-Operative Wholesale Society (aka The Co-operative Group)* as a distribution channel. - http://www.ukautomedia.com/hist_sample_pge.htm

In theory such a company under state ownership / Co-Op would be similar to OTL Volkswagen and Renault as well as potentially a glorified make-work/ers paradise scheme at worst (aka OTL British Leyland) that workers and unions flock to (on top of being encouraged by the government with numerous loans, etc to build factories in depressed areas aka “enterprise areas” around the UK like Linwood, etc), allowing other UK carmakers to breath easy and quietly downsize their workforce.

Also Peugeot for example managed to resist a number of government-backed merger attempts with Renault that never really evolved beyond the Douvrin engine family (aka PSA-Renault X-Type - later PSA TU, Douvrin and PRV V6 - originally conceived as a V8.)

*- The Co-Op themselves seriously considered entering the automotive business (along with producing commercial vehicles) having the strong and personal support of Stafford Cripps in OTL (see Battle for the Beetle by Karl Ludvigsen).
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
Ogrebear said:
Your going to set something very British from the design using the existing ideas and layout unless you get someone radical involved with the authority to do something very new.
Click to expand...

Very British, as in using the worst mechanical bits of all the different companies, directed by the most clueless managers and built by the most disgruntled Union Workers available?
 
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