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
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?

Also looking to include the worse events of carmakers like Renault (e.g. Georges Besse) and Fiat (e.g. influence of Red Brigades), prompting ATL Fedden Limited to attempt to placate the unions by building its own analogue of Dacia and Lada somewhere in the Communist / Eastern Bloc.

Otherwise it would largely be built from the ground-up with government / Co-Op backing (via proven rear-engined formula and a related family of engines), yet unlike Volkswagen would have no FWD Golf (and other tech from DKW/NSU aka Audi) to save it from bankruptcy sometime in the 1970s.
 
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Ultimately ATL Fedden Limited's legacy over the course of its eventful near 3 decade history would be unintentionally playing a positive role in saving the rest of the British Motor Industry as a nationalizing-obsessed government's plaything and sacrificial lamb, with the Wolfsburg-like works town at Stoke Orchard in Gloucestershire being salvaged by another vehicle manufacturer.

A rough German parallel would be Volkswagen going bankrupt in the mid/late-1960s to 1970s (via slowing sales of rear-engined cars combined with bad press in ATL Unsafe at Any Speed, etc), with the post-Volkswagen Wolfsburg site being used by Mercedes-Benz to further expand its production of lorries and other commercial vehicles.
 
A rough German parallel would be Volkswagen going bankrupt in the mid/late-1960s to 1970s (via slowing sales of rear-engined cars combined with bad press in ATL Unsafe at Any Speed, etc), with the post-Volkswagen Wolfsburg site being used by Mercedes-Benz to further expand its production of lorries and other commercial vehicles.

Nader pretty much ignored the VW Beetle and Bus until after 1970, by time the Covair was dead.
 
Nader pretty much ignored the VW Beetle and Bus until after 1970, by time the Covair was dead.

Perhaps though Volkswagen did later drop the Beetle, bus, etc from the US market, also assuming in the rough German parallel that the Corvair's bad reputation is butterflied away via 1960-1964 models receiving anti-roll bars as standard from the outset.

Speaking of the Corvair. Had the stillborn Corvair Gen2 Modular engine family in mind when thinking about the type of engine layout best suit for ATL Fedden Limited (the UK Volkswagen/Porsche analogue - particularly if made in Type 3/4 Pancake form), since it was capable of spawning Flat-Twin to Flat-12 engines.

OTOH a ZAZ/Tatra inspired 90-degree Vee engine layout would allow ATL Fedden Limited a better chance to penetrate the North American market (as many UK carmakers were eyeing success there in OTL via the post-war export or die drive), especially in V6/V8 forms though a 90-degree V12 is probably unlikely (Mercedes unsuccessfully investigated such an engine during development of the Mercedes-Benz 600).
 
Styling would be interesting.

The ATL Fedden Limited range of cars would probably resemble an albeit ATL viable version of the Jowett Javelin-derived F-Car prototype, with later cars potentially being styled by the likes of Giovanni Michelotti based on his OTL work at Hino with the Hino Contessa PC Coupe and Hino Contessa PD

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One way Fedden Limited could have mitigated the potential weight of the related engine family at the rear-end would be to later produce all-alloy versions via the British Aluminum Co, which could have saved the latter from its financial problems. Also worth mentioning that BMC looked at updating the A-Series into an all-alloy unit during the 1950s-1960s in OTL, first with the Aluminum Development Association (via the Austin A30/A35) and later with British Aluminum Co (with the Mini, etc).

Comparable all-alloy engines around that era include the Reliant OHV (derived from the 803cc Standard-Triumph SC engine), Coventry Climax-based 875cc Rootes Imp as well as the US developed 3.5-litre Buick V8 / Rover V8 and a pair of French Simca developed water-cooled 950cc Flat-4s originally intended for the Simca 1000 (weighting 45kg, one OHV and the other SOHC - via CAAPY Museum).

It is also possible that Fedden Limited could have utilized other British conceived technologies for better or worse, such as the Hobbs Mechamatic gearbox (used in the Ford Cortina and looked at by other carmakers in OTL), contracting/acquiring Villiers Engineering to develop the modular engine family (in OTL they developed a 650cc Flat-Twin for what eventually became the Hillman Imp prior to the latter switching to a Coventry Climax engine as well as possibly a W.O. Bentley designed air-cooled all-alloy Flat-4 used in a Morris Minor originally conceived to propel an aircraft) and even 4WD via Ferguson Research (used in the Jensen FF and other lesser known vehicles - Potentially being used for a Fedden analogue of the Chevrolet Corvair, Tatra 613 and Volkswagen EA128 prototype, with such a layout considered in OTL for the unbuilt 1983-1987 Tatra T625 project).
 
As far as inline-4 engines are concerned, NSU is unique in developing an air-cooled all-alloy OHC engine mounted in the rear-end for the NSU Prinz 1000 and NSU Typ 110 / NSU 1200 where in 1300cc NSU TT form it put out as much as 130 hp. The engine was later converted to a water-cooled 1.6-1.8 engine for the front-mounted NSU K70 / Volkswagen K70 and while there is so far little evidence for the following, it is possible the NSU engine was capable of being enlarged to 2-litres were it not for the presence of the Mercedes M118 / Volkswagen EA831 (used in Audis, Porsche 924 and Volkswagen LT) and Volkswagen EA827 engines.
 
@Masked Grizzly How long do you think your 'British Beetle' could have lasted?

Are you thinking a family of cars who's name is still going into 2019?

How does your Car company survive the 'Striking Seventies' and Thatcher?
 
@Masked Grizzly How long do you think your 'British Beetle' could have lasted?

Are you thinking a family of cars who's name is still going into 2019?

How does your Car company survive the 'Striking Seventies' and Thatcher?

Fedden would probably find itself wedded to the rear-engined RWD layout for its range of cars, due to it being very expensive to re-orient their production from the rear engine models to the front engine variety together with a government that simply may not have the money to help them modernize (even if it was not filled with union subversives). Even Volkswagen needed to be saved by the West German government before it began producing FWD models (albeit after acquiring NSU and DKW / Audi).

Without a similar government rescue Fedden would have probably gone bankrupt in the early/mid-1970s or struggled along until Thatcher finally put it out of its misery (similar to what she and her government planned to do to British Leyland in OTL). The company would likely be a hotbed of strikes / industrial action / militant workforce / etc that manages to leave the rest of the British Motor Industry relatively unscathed due to essentially being a glorified make-work/ers paradise scheme, which would certainly not help its case for the company's continued survival.

What would be a grand farcical end for Fedden would be a series of OTL-inspired events including elements of the 1984-1985 UK Miners Strike, assassinations / kidnappings / years of lead / etc by a UK version of Action Directe / Red Brigades (like at Renault and Fiat plus an analogue of the Kidnapping and Murder of Aldo Moro) supported by subversive unions seeking to turn the UK into a Cuba without the Sunshine as well as similar antics to what happened behind the scenes with DeLorean (coke, etc).

If the company does manage to survive up to the present day it would probably be at best as a low-volume aspirational/luxury carmaker akin to Porsche and Tatra by completely retreating from the mainstream Volkswagen/ZAZ segment, which would entail Fedden downscaling from its main Wolfsburg-like works town at Stoke Orchard in Gloucestershire and selling it off to another carmaker in favour of moving to a smaller plant (one it may have already owned beforehand during its post-war expansion period - especially if it never had a reputation as a hotbed of industrial action and workforce militancy).

Taking another leaf from Cuba without the Sunshine (though originally envisioned the following being for an ATL Scottish carmaker with an earlier devolved government where the West Lothian Question was resolved), perhaps either the Wilson or Callaghan governments (or an earlier Labour government) manages to temporarily save Fedden and get them to switch to FWD on the cheap via a deal with East Germany to build their own versions of the Trabant and Warburg Knight powered by four-stroke engines from either Renault / Dacia (more likely former - C-Type later possibly E-Type units enlarged to 1.6), Skoda (if under Eastern Bloc - potentially enlarged to 1.6 OHV), BMC (the A-Series was actually considered for the Warburg though following German link has inaccurate info, Wartburgs were also planned to be shipped to Finland and retrofitted with A-Series units during early/mid-1970s prior to them leaving the UK market) and from Wartburg's own four-stroke projects (from an ATL Wartburg-focused 80-83 hp 1.6 4-cylinder OHC to a Trabant-focused 59 hp 1.2 3-cylinder OHC petrol and 34 hp 1.1 3-cylinder OHC diesel).
 
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In a scenario where Fedden manages to survive as a low-volume aspirational / luxury carmaker akin to Porsche and Tatra, assuming they were inclined perhaps they would be able to potentially take over DeLorean.
 
Politically potential PODs of catalysts for a British version of the "Years of Lead" (including assassinations / kidnappings / etc) supported by militant unions would be Hugh Gaitskell managing to get Clause IV amended/removed (in the late-1950s), followed by Barbara Castle's "In Place of Strife" White paper being passed into law in the late-1960s that would provide the necessary spark.

Which together (along with any other unrealised proposals / etc) would likely split Labour into two parties in ATL (or potentially further revive the Liberal Party into a contender once more) as well as possibly unleash the "Years (or Decade) of Strife" by militant trade unions / etc at Fedden violently rallying against Barbara Castle's legislation being passed into law.

Yet aside from that other British carmakers would end up being largely unscathed especially if they stand their ground like Rover did in OTL under Harold Macmillan (or even in one ATL under say Rab Butler in place of both Anthony Eden and Macmillan - who apparently was of a similar mindset) by refusing to build their new factories in areas far from their Midlands base that later became hotbeds of militancy in OTL (see AROnline Essay: Did Government kill MG Rover above) and having Fedden (as a Government / Co-Op owned carmaker) instead fill the void by building factories in such places. (Though James Callaghan opposed "In Place of Strife" in OTL, upon becoming PM he would quickly regret opposing it as he was about to be hoisted upon his own petard by the late-1970s).
 
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