This article is a description of one of the few Swiss car makers: Monteverdi. The marque was formally founded by Peter Monteverdi in 1967 after he turned the family business, a car dealership, into a specialist manufacturer. Prior to founding the manufacturing company, Monteverdi had been building specials for road and racing which included MBM (Monteverdi Binnigen Motors) … [Read more...]
Jensen Motors
This week's history article is about a coachbuilder that became a manufacturer and survived the low volume manufacturing by being a supplier to other major manufacturers. The company is Jensen Motors based in the middle of the UK and was founded in 1934 by Richard and Alan Jensen who worked for WJ Smith, a commercial truck manufacturer. Prior to being with WJ Smith, the two … [Read more...]
Bristol Cars
If you are eccentric or fully loaded with pots of money you may be in the market for a Bristol – a very rare supercar that most people will never have seen! Like many car companies around the world, they came out of aircraft manufacturing – think about my history articles on Cord and Duesenberg, they used Lycoming who developed aircraft engines and there would have been a lot … [Read more...]
Torqueflite Gearbox
I first heard about the Torqueflite gearbox being used in the Jensen FF and other European cars that used large Chrysler Hemis for power. The gearbox was suitably mated to the Hemi because both came from Chrysler. The first Torqueflite was released in 1956 as a 3-speed auto replacing the Powerflite which was a 2-speed box. Variants of the torqueflite can be found on Jeep and … [Read more...]