V8 engine developed in the Dime Building, resulting in the penalty of leadership

[Orthophonic]

I have been reading "Master of Precision," a biography of Henry Leland, who formed Cadillac Motor [[and later Lincoln,) and found this interesting bit of Detroit automotive history. In the early automotive days the gas engines were primarily in-line 4-cylinder engines. In the early 20th century some manufacturers came out with the in-line 6-cylinder engine, which to some degree provided smoother operation but suffered from excessive vibrations due to the extended length of the crankshaft. Wilfred Leland, son of Henry Leland, had the idea to develop an engine with 2 banks of 4 cylinders each in a V configuration, the idea being to increase smoothness of operation [[smaller magnitude combustion pulses spaced closer together) without increasing the crankshaft length. This was not a brand new idea as it had been done on a limited scale by some European manufacturers. The Lelands did, however, secretly develop this concept as a robust mass production engine. So the cat would not escape from the bag they rented a suite of offices on the 22nd floor of the then-new Dime Building, removed from the Cadillac engineering offices, in order to develop the concept. Parts were ordered separately from a variety of New England machine shops [[Henry Leland calling in some favors from old colleagues and customers) and shipped to an "abandoned box factory" at the corner of Pelham and Drydock for assembly. These days I only see a 1-block long Pelham St. on the map just downriver from the Ambassador Bridge.

The new V8 engine was ultimately quite successful, although the naysayers were out in full force predicting its early demise. This resulted in the famous ad "The Penalty of Leadership," as published in 1915 in the Saturday Evening Post. http://www.wcroberts.org/Paige_Histo...0Cadillac.html

[canuck]

Good copy writing eh?

[Bigb23]

Having had several V8's over my lifetime, from 150 hp to 400 hp, including now,[[all GM), this was really interesting. I still have a fascination with the Ford Flathead. Google tiny engines. These guy's do it from scratch.