Ford's latest "innovation"

happily, sounding much like they were saying:


Nobody bought it.


Dunno about that far back, but VW certainly did it in the '80s, didn't
they? Citroen have been doing it as "Stop-Start" for about five years,
BMW are doing it on the new Mini, and that's before you go near the
various Hybrids.

Adrian wrote:


VAG did it in the 80s (my dad's Audi 80 - a 1980 one - had it), ISTR you
had a button to enable the system, coming to a halt and doing
/something/ make the engine stop, then pressing brake and clutch and
again, doing /something/ with the gearlever in Neutral made it restart.

Then they remarketed it in the 90s as part of the Golf Umwelt.

And now it's showing up in their Bluewhatsit diesel models.

*shrugs* I hear that some companies messed around with FWD pre-war, but
people like to credit things like the Mini with it...

RichardK

 Claimed to be the first FWD with transverse packaging - but the 1949 Saab
92 had a transverse mounted engine...

Well Citroen were making FWD cars in the UK long before the Mini appeared.
Could be the Mini was the first in class to use it. Before it most ultra
small cars were rear engined.

--
*What am I? Flypaper for freaks!?

    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
                  To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

A good link with history of front wheel drive is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front-wheel_drive

Citroen Traction Avant. 1934 was the first FWD car AFAIK.
Mike.

My Boys Book of Cars says Alvis. ;-)

--
*Why is it that to stop Windows 95, you have to click on "Start"?

    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
                  To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Accompanied by the sound of a chisel on slate Dave Plowman
wisdom

The Cord L29 was FWD in 1929.


--
Pete M -  OMF#9
"Save your breath for cooling your porridge!
W&P Range Rover V8 Turbo
Scorpio Ultima 24v

On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:11:30 -0000, "Pete M"


A year after the Alvis, then. Remind me where they made Cords in the
UK?

--

Ian D

Accompanied by the sound of a chisel on slate Ian
of wisdom

--
Pete M -  OMF#9
"Save your breath for cooling your porridge!
W&P Range Rover V8 Turbo
Scorpio Ultima 24v

On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:11:30 -0000, Pete M

As, IIRC, was the first BSA fwd.


--
Cheers,
Stan Barr     stanb .at. dial .dot. pipex .dot. com
(Remove any digits from the addresses when mailing me.)

The future was never like this!

Damn. I should have remembered the Besa. Someone I knew used one as a
daily driver up until a couple of years ago.

--
Andy Breen ~     Not speaking on behalf of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
        Feng Shui: an ancient oriental art for extracting
         money from the gullible (Martin Sinclair)

Not even close, the Graef brothers voiturette 1900.

Not even nearly. There were several Alvii (road cars as well as racers),
Millers (mostly racers, may have been a few road cars) and maybe even
Cords before that, plus - and now we're talking pre-WW1 - Ferdy Porsche's
Loehner designs were FWD, using petrol-electric drive with the motors in
the hubs (thus proving that Porsche had an unerring eye for a flawed
solution...). And, way back when, Nicholas Cugnot's steam tractor - the
first full-size mechanically-propelled vehicle - was FWD. In 1769. Which
is a bit before the Traction Avant.

It's be accurate to say that the Traction Avant was - eventually - the
first commercially successful FWD car (I say "eventually", as putting it
into production caused the collapse of the Citroen company and its
take-over by Michelin).

--
Andy Breen ~     Not speaking on behalf of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
        Feng Shui: an ancient oriental art for extracting
         money from the gullible (Martin Sinclair)

On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:26:50 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Robert Breen

BSA eventually built about 7,000 fwd cars in the '30s, not quite in
Citroen territory, but quite respectable production for the time.

--
Cheers,
Stan Barr     stanb .at. dial .dot. pipex .dot. com
(Remove any digits from the addresses when mailing me.)

The future was never like this!

The date being 17 Jan 2008, Richard Kilpatrick


No I don't think anyone really thinks the Mini was the first FWD car!

Very little in the original Mini was actually a new idea. What Alec
Issigonis did was bring together all the ideas (transverse engine,
gearbox in the sump, front wheel drive, constant velocity joints,
rubber suspension, monocoque shell, etc.) in a single, very compact
package.

--
Richard Porter
ricp@ / www. minijem.plus.com
"You can't have Windows without pains."

I'm not sure about before the World war I as then starter motors were not
that common.

Rover and I think others had the Lucas Startix system in the late 30s that
did the same thing.  It wasn't a great success and I think most people
disabled it.

Malcolm

I'm sure I read somewhere that the small BMW petrol engine used in the
latest Minis and Peugeot 207s doesn't have a throttle valve but instead uses
variable valve timing and lift to achieve the same effect.

Just like the 1904 Darracq....

Ron Robinson

The next version of this system is in development, and it could be on
this car, is starting the engine without the starter motor. The ECU
does a controled stop when the engine is switched off so it stops in a
certain position, then to start an injector fires and the plug sparks
and this starts the engine. This only works on a hot engine. This,
direct injection, turbo charging and loads of EGR will be standard on
all petrol engines in 10 years time.
S