{"id":2717,"date":"2006-12-06T04:54:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-06T09:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2006\/12\/no-trailer-queen\/"},"modified":"2010-12-30T12:02:03","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T17:02:03","slug":"no-trailer-queen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2006\/12\/no-trailer-queen\/","title":{"rendered":"No Trailer Queen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Crosley<\/a><\/p>\n

I believe that cars belong on roads, not trailers. I used to think nothing of driving Angus the Hudson<\/a> fifty miles each way to attend a show, but I’ve softened somewhat. I’ve owned trailers for more than thirty years, principally for moving cars that don’t run<\/a> or are unregistered<\/a>, so now sometimes I’ll load Angus<\/a> and haul him<\/a>, so as to travel at freeway speeds. Trailers are cumbersome, though. So how about a car that needs no trailer, is easily carried in the back of a pickup? Consider, friends, consider the Crosley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Powel Crosley, Jr.<\/a> was a marketing and inventing genius<\/a>. Pioneering the low-cost radio receiver<\/a> he then founded WLW, a high power broadcasting station in Cincinnati, Ohio, to give his radios something to receive. His Crosley Shelvador<\/a> refrigerator set the pattern for all modern fridges. In the late 1930s, he sought to bring America a small, low-cost car. His Crosley automobile<\/a>, introduced in 1939, was a spartan roadster<\/a> powered by an air-cooled Waukesha flat twin engine.<\/p>\n

After World War II, Crosley brought his car somewhat upmarket, with a four-cylinder engine<\/a> designed by Lloyd Taylor for military use. With a block of steel cylinders and tin-plated sheet metal<\/a> water jacket, and shaft driven overhead cam, the Crosley Cobra<\/a> (COpper BRAzed) weighed 58 pounds in fighting trim. A whole line of automobiles<\/a> – the only totally new 1946 cars – was built around it. There were two-door sedans<\/a> (this a ’47<\/a>), station wagons<\/a> (’48<\/a> and ’51<\/a>), convertibles<\/a> (’49<\/a> and ’51<\/a>) and pickup trucks<\/a> (’47). In 1949, a sports model, the Hotshot<\/a>, was introduced – later the Hotshot was joined by a Super Sports<\/a> model with doors. There was a panel delivery<\/a> and a Jeep-like thing called the FarmOroad<\/a>. By 1952, though, it was all over. Sales, which had topped 25,000 in 1948, shrank to less than a tenth of that. Powel pulled the plug on the car business.<\/p>\n

The Cobra engine<\/a> had a fatal flaw in that electolysis destroyed the lightweight blocks. The fix was the CIBA engine<\/a> – Cast Iron Block Assembly. With an iron block the little Crosley cammer became a high-revving competition engine and eventually found service as an outboard motor under the Homelite<\/a> name, and as the Fisher-Pierce<\/a> Bearcat<\/a> by the builder of Boston Whaler<\/a> boats. The FarmOroad<\/a>, too, saw later life as an industrial vehicle called the Crofton Bug<\/a>. There’s tons more information on Crosleys at the website of the Crosley Automobile Club<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My high school friend Tod<\/a> had a Crosley<\/a>, a 1949 sedan<\/a> with the CIBA engine – and disc brakes. The week after graduation in 1962 we drove it to Cape Cod<\/a>, a 200-mile trip. Even for a couple of hormone-charged adolescents, the Crosley was uncomfortable. Girls thought it cute, and would wave when we honked, but they preferred to ride in cars with V8s and glass packs. We challenged a Vespa scooter<\/a> to a stoplight drag – and lost.<\/p>\n

Tod had a parts car, a ’51 station wagon whose transmission and rear axle had been removed to build a tractor. When he moved to the west coast, I bought it and took it home<\/a> in my Chevy pickup – no trailer needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I believe that cars belong on roads, not trailers. I used to think nothing of driving Angus the Hudson fifty miles each way to attend a show, but I’ve softened somewhat. I’ve owned trailers for more than thirty years, principally for moving cars that don’t run or are unregistered, so now sometimes I’ll load Angus….<\/span>
Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3357,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions\/3357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}