To respond to Chevrolet, Ford introduces a V8 in 1932, until then a construction for the top of the market. By a twist of fate, the last copies of this success number are assembled by Chrysler almost forty years later.
When Chevrolet comes out with its first mass-produced six-cylinder inline engine in 1929, Ford does not immediately have an appropriate answer. Nothing would make more sense for Ford than to come up with a six-cylinder; production of large V8s and V12s was a costly affair in those days and therefore a bridge too far for volume production. However, Henry Ford hates Chevrolet and refuses to do what Chevrolet does. Thus, at the end of the 1920s, Ford started developing a V8. Because the impossible must be made possible. All stops are pulled out to design a V8 that can be built at low cost and, not unimportantly, in large volumes (up to 3,000 units per day). Ford opts for a construction with side valves. The valves are located next to the cylinders in the engine block. The cylinder head is therefore nothing more than a flat cover on top of the engine. That is why the power unit is soon referred to as the Ford Flathead V8. This construction is relatively simple and inexpensive, which is of course ideal for reducing costs and driving production to great heights. Furthermore, the side valve engine is quite compact, reliable and suitable for running on low octane petrol.
Ford V8 Roadster
Important disadvantages of the construction that is customary these days are a moderate gas exchange, a not really optimal shape of the combustion chamber and a low compression ratio. Of course this is reflected in the performance, but good: there’s no substitute for cubic inches, the V8 will have a displacement of 3,621 cc. When the Flathead debuted in 1932 in the Ford 18 (basically a Model B with V8) the engine had 65 horsepower, 5 more than Chevrolet’s in-line six.
The engine soon finds its way through the Ford model range, including in European Fords (with or without a smaller displacement of only 2.2 litres). Although the engine appears for the first time in a passenger car, it also works well in trucks and buses. The basic design of the engine also offers enough possibilities for versions with a larger displacement. It eventually ends up at 5.5 litres. The latter then applies to use in trucks.
Mercury Eight Club Convertible
When Ford presents the new Mercury brand in 1938 (to bridge the gap between the regular Fords and the luxury Lincoln), those cars get a 3.9 liter version of the V8. At Lincoln, however, they turn up their noses at the Flathead, which is too common. Only when it fails to develop a new V12 for model year 1949 does the Lincoln division give in and make the 5.5 liter truck version of the Flathead suitable for the limousines.
The V8 is also in great demand outside the Ford group. When Citroën is working on a V8 version of the Traction Avant (the 22cv V8) in the early 1930s, a number of prototypes are built with the Ford Flathead for the simple reason that Citroën does not have its own V8 engines available. In the second half of the 1930s, the engine also found its way into several Matfords (a joint venture between Ford and France’s Mathis) in France. During World War II, the V8 is also installed in the CMP, the Canadian Military Patern truck, a military standard vehicle built in large volumes (approximately 500,000 units) by American car manufacturers in Canada for the armed forces of the British Commonwealth.
Citroen Traction Avant 22CV V8
After the war, Ford built the 3.9 liter version in France in the Vedette and its derivative Vendôme and with 2,158 and 2,355 cc also in the graceful Comète coupé. When Simca takes over the French Ford factory in 1954, it is with the rights to the models, including the V8 that was already removed from the American program in 1953. Simca, however, continues with it in the Vedette and the Ariane.
After the takeover of Talbot-Lago by Simca in 1959, the V8 with a displacement of 2,351 cc even appears in the sports cars of that brand, because BMW no longer wants to supply engines. Simca also built the engine between 1964 and 1973 in the Simca Unic Mamron Bocquet (SUMB) trucks for the French army, which continued to run until the 1990s.
Simca Vedette
The V8 crosses the Atlantic again in 1959 when Simca starts building the Vedette (including the Rallye name) in Brazil. This Brazilian Vedette gets a successor, the Esplanada, in 1966, with a derivative of the V8 Flathead still under the hood. That remains the case when Chrysler, one of Ford’s major competitors from Detroit, takes over the Simca activities in Brazil in 1967 and continues to build the power unit until 1969. In the hot rod world, the flathead is still popular today and there are versions with overhead valve and petrol injection that can deliver up to 700 horsepower without any problems.
This article originally appeared in AutoWeek Classics issue 8 of 2016.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl