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Old 06-09-2019, 09:55 PM
Vespers War Vespers War is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b View Post
Oh good god, I'm not even going to bother with that one...
It sort of made sense at the time, since some jurisdictions taxed vehicles based on horsepower. Illinois and Georgia did so in the US (and IIRC Missouri still does), and most of Europe had some sort of horsepower-based tax, so a small car with a very low-powered engine was economical. It also drove oddities in engine design, because the calculated horsepower was based on bore size, but stroke length didn't matter. That incentivized small-bore, long-stroke engines, which tend to run at low RPM and have high torque and low power for their displacement.

A fair number of early British cars will have their taxable horsepower and actual horsepower in their name - the Talbot 14/45 was taxed at 14 horsepower, but the engine delivered 45 horsepower, while Alvis had a 12/50 that did well in racing and MG developed the long-stroke engine all the way to an 18/80. If the Model T had had a similar name, it would have been a Ford 22/20, equaled in actual power by the lower-taxed Triumph 10/20.

Most cyclecar manufacturers lasted only a handful of years (something true of a lot of Brass Era car makers), but there were a few marques that stuck around either on their own or by being acquired, such as Frazer Nash, AC Cars Ltd, and Scripps-Booth (which was acquired by Chevrolet early in that marque's history).
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