My Aunt drove all the way from California to North Carolina in Crosley station wagon. They had all their worldly positions on board. That's was about 1954, 55.
Funny story -- Powell Crosley's house (in Cincinnati, now a museum open for tours) was right around the corner from the apartment where I lived the first four years of my life. Sadly, I moved to Indiana about 12 years ago and never toured it.
At 77, I remember my dad in the 1950's - a true odd car collector - he bought a Crosley Wagon Deluxe. It was red with "woody" trim. He then traded it for two Crosley sedans. One night on our way to a friend's house he spotted that red woody wagon with a for sale sign. We finished the trip to our friends place with TWO Crosleys, mom drove the beige sedan with dad proudly at the wheel of the wagon. We ended up with another grey wagon until one day my dad traded all four cars for two Studebakers. One time he bought all the cars from a funeral home - five 1949 Buicks...
Thank you! It’s a fun little car. A video of the restoration at a more advanced point is available, including drive-by footage: ua-cam.com/video/q3621ap7Fic/v-deo.html I’ve enjoyed my visits to Germany. Thanks for watching!
In 1952 I saw my first Crosley in my town. I saw only one more in all these years. Cute and interesting. Also had a neighbor that owned a Henry J. he had a Kaiser Frazer in his garage. Cars most never see much less touch. Thanks for the memory.
I had a swamp buggy with a Crosley engine and that 3 speed transmission it had a second transmission to gear it down for more power I was amazed with that over head cam .
A friend of mine in Paducah KY has about 50 Crosley. If Crosley made it he has it. He has performance parts that were made for Crosley. He has a 1 of 1 Crosley fiberglass body and the factory mold for it. Only 1 was ever made when the factory burned down. He has a Crosley powered mini speed boat and a Crosley fire truck. He built a Crosley to break the land speed record for its class. Its amazing to walk through his warehouse and see all the cars that have been restored. He has generators that Crosley built for ww2. Crosley refrigerator. Radios you name it. Another friend bought a car with no motor or transmission and I converted it And put a honda goldwing gl1500 motor in it then custom paint job. I restored cars for many years and the Crosley was a fun job. We covered every inch of the inside body panels with dynamat noise damper then made custom door panels. Headliner. Custom auto carpet and leather interior. The seats were reshaped With extra padding. All lights were led. New wiring with modern fuse and relay panel. All new brake.turn. tail. Flasher and headlights. 4 wheel disc brakes. Wipers with delay. Was a great driving car when finished. It would cruise all day at 75mph. I wish I had one I would do another goldwing swap. I might sell my mercedes diesel and buy a Crosley or a original mini to restomod. Fun cars to play with.
I have a friend here in east Texas that has 4 Crosleys. He said he has had them since the 50's. They need restoring. I believe one is a station wagon 2 are cars and one is a pickup. He is working on a 49 JD tractor that he got from me. It runs but needs a new front end and he has one he has to go get, it is down close to his dad's plce close to the lake. I played with that tractor many years and never knew the front end needed replacing. I never noticed it being hard to steer but he did the first time he got on it. lol I really enjoyed the film. Thanks!
I owned three Crosley's in the 60's. One was a 48 wagon. Mine had the cast iron block. Most Crosley owners converted their cars to the cast block due to the problems with the Cobra. We used to call them sheet metal blocks. I must say that I haven't seen a Cobra Block in decades. It's cool to that you have one that is in running condition.
A good portion of the block was certainly made of sheet metal. It was furnace brazed together with a copper alloy, hence the name "COpper BRAzed". It worked very well in the application it was originally made for, but it couldn't handle the rigors of an automotive application where it had to run in cold weather. The cast iron block with which they replaced it turned out to not be a whole lot heavier.
Learned to drive in a Crosley. 1960 I was 10. Neighbor had 10 acres mowed field to drive around on. The car was chopped, so open. That was a thrilling, safe way to learn. He also had a ‘56 Porsche we did not get to drive.
You have a very rare Crosley their are only a few Crosley left with the original copper brazed engine. According to a friend in the Crosley club only a hand full are left with working cobra engines. Also your oil filter was an original option from the factory.
Thanks, Brandon. Working CoBra engines are indeed rare. It's fun to open the hood and show it off at car shows. Most folks have never seen anything other than a cast iron or aluminum engine. Thankfully, good modern antifreeze helps prevent the internal corrosion than most of these engine succumbed to back in the day.
My high school buddy had one just like this in 1956. We used to go tooling around South Bend, Indiana in that buggy. Great fun. It sure did slow down going up hills though. Great memories!
Wow! I not only learned about your car, but got a lesson in double-clutching. I saw some Crosleys being used as clown cars when I was a kid, and I’ve been fascinated with them ever since. These cars were sturdier than I thought, if yours is any indication. Good luck with it! If the East Germans had Crosleys instead of Trabants, the Soviet Union will still exist today.
Many Crosleys went on to extended lives as golf carts, clown cars, Shriners parade cars, etc. It's amazing how many of these exist today, given less than 100,000 were built 1939-1952.
The wagon body was introduced in November of 47 as a 48 model. It was the start of the flat sided pickup bodies instead of the earlier sedan fender style. The 1948 Station Wagon was the most popular model Crosley built with 23,489 made. Crosley was the top builder of Station Wagons in the world in 1948. They were the first completely steel bodied wagon made, beating Plymouth (who normally gets credit) by a year. The Jeep wagon body was earlier but most historians considered that a truck or carry all, you decide.
I had a Crosley Wagon in the mid 50s. A fun car! It would blow the electrical fuse, so I put in a small copper tube in instead of the fuse. (No Recommended ha ha ha) The tube would heat up!
That is in fact the name of the Crosley Facebook group... "Crosley... A Fun Car!" They are still a blast to own, drive, work on, and share at shows. The club is the most fun I've ever had in any car club.
During the depression, Powell Crosley made a radio for $7 comparable to other radios costing over $100. Then he created a radio station (first 500W, then 5,000W, then 50,000W, and during the depression (12M to 6 AM) it went to 500,000W), so people could listen to the radios. I suggest it was this frugality that led to such spartan vehicles. I don't think Crosley anticipated the post-war economic boom.
He was definitely aiming to be the value option - reasonable features at the lowest price. As you say, that’s not what people were looking for as the 1950s dawned.
Very interesting auto, small, efficient, yet spacious inside... so loud though...! Just previous to watching this video, I watched an Austin 7 test drive, so quiet, what a difference...!
I’ve had a bunch of old cars that had to be double clutched, especially when the grease was cold in the transmission. If you let the clutch out in neutral between each gear while upshifting and don’t poke around about it, get it on in the gear after you push the clutch back in from neutral, you won’t grind as much. I can tell from listening to you shift it. Also ,when you downshift and go to neutral and let the clutch out for a second and speed it up to where you hear it sounding like the rpm that it will be spinning when you are driving in that gear and ground speed ,then push the clutch back in and downshift so you’ll match the rotating mass spinning fast enough to mesh.
As teenagers we learned to use engine rpms and double clutch w/o using the clutch. For us it was just a gimmick and really not needed. Double clutching was the norm for truckers many years ago. A friend's mom had the clutch cable break on her Fiat and used this technique to get around for a few weeks till she could replace it. The Fiat was so light she would turn off the engine at stop lights and stick it in 1st. Just hitting the key in gear got it going.
My dad had one of these, a black wagon, sometime between 1956-59, on the island of Guam; thanks for showing your car and doing a thorough presentation!
I saw a Ford truck with mechanical brakes that had the rear drums replaced with disk brakes. They were still mechanical but worked much better. Just thought you might think about that possibility. Nice car. Looks like you are doing a great job with it.
We had a post WWII Willy's Overland (Jeep Station wagon 4-63) built as one unit. For a good read try the late S M Kaminsky detective series Toby Peters. He tools around Hollywood in his Crosley, helping the Hollywood types. Thanks. Narragansett Bay
Hmm... going to have to look up those books. Willys had the all-steel body fist, but it was on a truck chassis. Crosley usually gets the credit for the all-steel automotive station wagon.
Nifty little car! Before I was born, my family had a ca. 1950 Crosley wagon, similar pale yellow to your example. Somehow, so I heard, they managed to strap a piano on top of it, when moving to another home; not sure how they managed not to tip it over! Somewhere in my collection of memorabilia, I have a color slide photo of that Crosley, parked next to my Mom's first car, a 1938 Hupmobile, and an MG-TD...they used to do road rallies in the Washington, D.C. area back then. The Crosley powerplant eventually formed the basis for Lou Fageol's (famous Unlimited hydroplane driver of the 1950s) "Fageol 44" outboard motor--one of the earliest 4-stroke outboards. Further iterations of this were made by Crofton Engineeering, Homelite (by then, the engine had been enlarged to around 60 cu. in., and 55 HP), and finally Fisher-Pierce w/ their "Bearcat" variant, all the way thru 1972. Thanks for the tour and test drive!
Wow! Crosleys have about a quarter-ton (500lb) carrying capacity, and that includes passengers. The piano must have squashed it right down onto the bump stops. 😆 Crosley engines, especially the cast-iron derivative, were excellent power plants that found their way into many uses for many, many years.
September 1995. There was a 50th anniversary for the end of WWII in Hawaii through Waikiki. I rode as special duty officer (Honolulu PD) behind the Grand Marshall's car. The Grand Marshal was Bob Hope. He rode in a Crosley.
Yeah, that's a point of contention. Willys was first with the all steel body, but it was on a truck chassis. Crosley guys like to say this was the first all-steel station wagon car. :^) I'll spot you the Willys. Remarkably, tiny little Crosley did sell more station wagons than any other brand in 1948, mostly on the strength of this very practical design.
@@mparkhhunter yea willy did have one but crosley beat them to market bye more than a mouth selling there cars in department stores before any willys dealers got any cars
There's a picture of 2-year-old me in a 1954 with a ball peen hammer in my diapers only pounding on the left rear fender of our bright yellow and red Crosley station wagon. It had a blown up motor and some other problems it was going to the wrecking yard. But Dad thought it would be a cute picture. Little did he know he was raising a mechanic.
I have almost the exact same thing. I have a yellow 48 wagon body, chassis and a spare chassis plus several boxes of parts. I have been slowly putting it back together as well. I also have the so called tin engine that I don’t know the condition of but have several boxes of parts to build a cast engine. This gave me the needed boost to get back at it. Thank you.
Good for you! My son (in middle school at the time) was the one who spurred me to get to work on my car. They are relatively simple and easy to figure out. If you haven't found it yet, check out the Crosley Automobile Club ( crosleyautoclub.com ). Great vendor support for most parts, friendly club folks with good advice, and lots of fun. The national meet is held in Wauseon, OH around the 4th of July each year. There are regions around the country with local meets.
I am old enough to remember Crosley cars. Don’t make fun of them - they are the fastest cars available back then. It was obvious. If you were watching a main roadway, you would see a line of other makes lined up. And guess which was in FRONT of the line? Yes, a Crosley! Shazam!
I have never seen such a small American-designed car. To my European eyes the quirky styling, tiny size and unconventional engineering are more typical of East European cars from the 1950s.
Crosleys are often mistaken for foreign cars in the US. But they are a unique and very American story. The club website has lots more details and history… crosleyautoclub.com
They had a inverted bucket tappets almost exactly like a Suzuki 750 g s. type overhead cam shaft driven cam very high-tech engine for the time the outboard, crosley.. motor sold by homelite where that engine they made 55 horsepower with a dual carburetor setup and some other things
My father had a 1950 Willey's Jeep station wagon, which sat 5 & had solid doors! As a child, I hated that this auto was our family car then, because it was so ugly, but looking at this Crosley, I now realize it wasn't the worst!
Yup. Crosley pioneered the refrigerator with shelves in the doors. Until the patent expired, other companies had their models stand in front of the open door to hide the lack of shelves.
Somewhere on an old phone I have a set of side-by-side pics of a '48ish Crosley sedan and a 2008 Toyota Yaris hatchback. They're about even in length and height but the Crosley is MUCH narrower and has a shorter wheelbase. It would've been interesting to run an banana-box loading test between something like the Yaris or the Honda Fit I have now with a Crosley wagon, which has a nice low and deep load floor (like the Fit but very much unlike the Yaris).
I took photos next to my 2000 Honda Insight, also a very small car. The Crosley is narrow for two reasons - (1) Crosley dealers mostly sold appliances, so the car was designed to fit through the double doors of a store, and (2) they could be packed side-by-side in a boxcar for shipping. Despite the size, they are surprisingly roomy inside. I'm guessing they'd do well at the banana box test!.
When I was a kid my dad had a cast iron Crosley engine with transmission. He’d said someone had it in a boat, so I always assumed the water pump was a marine adaptation, but obviously it wasn’t. I drove that engine 10,000 miles sitting still in the garage. It shifts easily when not running! To my disappointment, he gave it away when we moved.
Quality control problems sullied the brand’s reputation. But mostly, it was a small, slow car when America was excited about bigger and faster. Once the big 3 (Ford, Chevy & Plymouth) got production up to speed after WW2 and lowered prices, a Crosley wasn’t enough cheaper to be a compelling option.
Me too. The crossovers are basically tall station wagons, but they're not as cool. One of our current cars is a Ford Flex, which is a wonderful near-wagon.
Cincinnati Ohio born and made interesting thing when the company went under nobody bought them out in 52 they never merged or anything Really cool I got a question for you though He said normal cruising speed about 45-50 Max but if you want to do kind of like some people do a change the rear axle ratio could you get that thing to cruise on down the road faster? Surprised how fast that thing lit up to. Even 70° it doesn't really matter it's just fired right off.
Engineered in Cincinnati, but most of the manufacturing was done in Marion, Indiana. When they closed in 1952 the Aerojet company bought them out, mostly for the rights to the engine. Service Motors, a New York dealer, purchased a ton of spare parts and remains in business as the largest Crosley vendor today. The gearing is a balance between power and speed. With only 26.5 horsepower, you can't push a lot of air. I have a modified Crosley with 50% higher final drive, and it maxes out around 56mph due to wind resistance before the engine hits max RPM's. With the stock gearing, 1st and 2nd are actually pretty snappy around town... but they only get you to 20mph.
@@mparkhhunter that's neat I always wondered about the history of them I just knew about the Cincinnati connection I didn't know there was more to it thanks.
Heck, I only revved it up about halfway! Sure sounds like a lot if your ear is tuned for the flatheads of the era that maxed out around 3200rpm. The Crosley engine would cruise at 5,000+rpm, and stock could wind to 7,000rpm periodically without harm.
You are welcome. Crosley claimed 35-50mpg back in the day. My gauge doesn't work so I haven't tracked it, but other Crosley owners say the 35mph estimate is ballpark.
It's mostly about rev-matching the input from the engine to the output to the rear end. Upshifting wouldn't help, except it would slow the shift down. Mostly I find that I just need to be patient and give the car a second or two in neutral. I've gotten better since this video was recorded.
Which engine is used in this car? I mean Crosley had their own developed engine? and if they had their own Developed engine, what happened to the rights of their engine after crosley's bankruptcy, now who holds the right of their engine?
Crosley purchased the engine design from engineer Lloyd Taylor. After Crosley closed, several firms owned & built the engines, concluding with Homelite in the ‘70s - used as outboard motors. Detailed history here… crosleyautoclub.com/EngineTree/Crosley_Eng_Tree.html
thanks for posting your vid my dad had several crosleys my fav was his 46 ser number 333 .been looking for it for years he also had a 48 i think yellow with a ford 60 horse in id love to know if that one survived too he brought it to mexaco when he was still in service and had a maroon tuck and roll leather interior put in to drove a few times cross country back in the fifty's i still have a ton of parts in the barn for them .fun cars
Thanks for the memories! Check out the Crosley Auto Club (crosleyautoclub.com). They have a registry and might be able to find your dad’s old cars by serial number. Also lots of folks who’d be interested in that barn full of parts. 😁
Sweet. The Crosley engines were nice little power units that found their way into plenty of projects. As michigandon says, the transmission and differential also were used by various manufacturers. If you need help getting your engine going, check out the Crosley Auto Club (crosleyautoclub.com) for advice and parts vendors..
Crosleys were the first with hydraulic disc brakes all the way around. That was in 1949, and for that year only. Crosley went out of business in 1952, but some cars may have been sold in 1953 and titled accordingly. The brake systems swapped, so someone may have retrofit the discs onto your later car.
BUT MY FIRST CAR WAS A CROSLEY A BLACK CONVERTIBLE AND YES THEY HAD A SHEET MEATL MOTOR THE TRANSMISSION'S WERE USED IT ALL TYPES OF OTHER MACHINES LIKE POWER KING TRACTORS AND TRENCHERS A VERY VERSATILE TRANS
I enjoy all old micros and mini's. & had had quite a few varieties of them back in the muscle car days when small cars & especially small foreign cars were not popular or even hated by "Real Americans" cars like Isettas & Austin 7, Bantamsm, Citroens and such like i have had when running units when found could be had for $50 or less all day long There was one of these Crosley wagons and a cool homebrew model T doodle bug sitting out in the Desert by an old miners shack in a short box canyon near where i live in the northern Mojave Desert, which is now part of Death Valley Nat Park and protected. It was a very complete unmolested car, Not full of bullet holes and urban a-hole destructive vandalism done to it, It sat there for well over 50 years that i know of, not a bit of paint left on the clean straight body, beautiful rust oxide surface patina. i always wanted to go haul that little jewell out before it was found & shot full of holes up by some urban weekend warriors & city idiots. Last time i saw it was a little over 20 years ago, and then the Model T doodlebug was gone & I am sure the Crosley is long gone today as many old cars and mining equipment left out in the desert at mining claims & hermit dwellings have been either shot to pieces or removed/stolen by people looking for antiques, rare parts, yard art collectables or worse by modern day scrap metal recyclers.The big scrap metal drives for the war effort back during WW2 saw the removal of many old pre-war vehicles that were not hidden in isolated hard to access places out in the deserts and mountains of the southwest.I was fortunate to see many of those behicles that were just too remote to be stolen back in the day before modern treasure hunters and google earth explorers and their drones came into existence and have exposed & exploited and thus destroyed so many of those old cabins, homesteads and mining cabins & claims.
Thanks for sharing your memories! I love finding old evidence of humans in odd places. Hopefully the Crosley and the Doodlebug found homes with folks who appreciated them.
A very basic simple reliable car, that tail door would be a bit of a pain, the pedals ( accelerator/brake/clutch ) are normal i am guessing, the other car near the start looked like a Ford Falcon BA XR/6/8?? I did not get a good look at it. Double de clutching takes a lot of practice too perfect!
Basic and simple, yes. Reliability was not something Crosleys were known for, although they got much better over time. The pedals are normal. Double-clutching takes practice. The car in the background was probably my 2002 Ford Focus SVT.
@@mparkhhunteryes, still if you can such a car as this or a Model A then you should be able to drive ANY car really, modern vehicle are much much easier to drive but not as challenging or interesting very little reward that old cars give you!!
The car is 6 volt, positive ground. On the exhaust side of the engine, the generator is driven by a pulley, and a shaft on the back of the generator drives the red water pump via a rubber coupling. It's surprisingly reliable.
Actually, there are three great sources for most parts: Service Motors, Yankee Crosley, and Dave Edwards. Here’s a list ... crosleyautoclub.com/PartsSuppliers.html
Crosley engines had many uses. In the military, they powered generators and bomb bay doors. In civilian life, they were used to power refrigerator units on semi trucks, as inboard and outboard boat motors, and even as airplane engines.
That’s my old Pebble smartwatch. Always-on e-paper display and a week of battery life. The company got absorbed by FitBit. I still miss the simpler Pebbles!
No synchronization meant you had to rev the engine to the right rpm for a gear change? Those are really cute cars. When all is said and done, most people don't need a car bigger than that. I bet it got and still gets phenomenal gas mileage. But could'a, should'a, would'a!
Thanks for watching! Yes, without synchro you need to match revs to shift without a “crunch.” I get it right about 70% of the time. 😅 Crosley owners claimed 35-50mpg back in the day, which is still quite impressive today! Modern cars are FAR more comfortable, capable, and safer though. I enjoy driving my Crosley around town or in country roads, but I’m always scanning the environment and hoping nobody crashes into me. 😮
Powel Crosley wasn't looking at the European model so much as trying to develop a cheap, simple, "second car" for American families. He was 6'4" tall and fit easily in the front seat of a Crosley. Other design constraints - like the width - were determined by shipping and delivery considerations. They would fit two abreast in a railroad boxcar, and could go through double-doors to be sold from the floor of an appliance store. (Crosley was a big radio and appliance manufacturer.)
@@mparkhhunter I know, I was making a joke about the many post-war attempts of americans to recreate those "exotic cars" they got their hands on during the war, we all know how those attempts went. Crosley's cars look exactly like the kind of car someone over there tried to emulate after seeing a Fiat Topolino (even tho I gotta say, it would've been a better choice as a first car than its contemporary mausoleums on wheels. I love vintage cars, but american ones from the 30s up to the 80s have always been exaggerate in terms of size)
, mas você tem que aprender a condução de carro! Não sabe trocar marchas, muito tempo em marchas reduzidas..arranha AS engrenagens na troca de marchas. Parabéns por preservar esta relíquia.
Thanks. It isn't easy to shift these, even with practice. The transmission has straight-cut gears, so even with double-clutching it is a challenge and requires patience.
Nope. The block and head (single unit) were pressed and brazed steel. The crankcase was cast aluminum. The crankshaft was generally cast or nodular iron, although they also used some steel crankshafts.
Crosley pioneered 4-wheel Goodyear Hydradisc brakes in 1949 on ALL their cars. Talk about being ahead of the curve! Alas, they didn't test for winter conditions. Salty roads caused the calipers to corrode and fail, so in 1950 they switched to 9" hydraulic drums, which were still a lot of brake for a small car.
The suspension technology dates from the Model T / Model A era: live axles front and rear, leaf springs, lever action shocks that only damp in one direction, and cable-operated mechanical brakes. This was really out-of-date by the 1940s.
Ha ha! Was fun to see a Crosley featured on Top Gear: Eurocrash! They did some very Crosley things: get blown around on the highway, crawl uphill in low gear, and prank James by moving the car. 😁 That said - they’re more reliable than his car was, and it should have been able to cruise at 45-50mph. For waaaayyy more info go check out… crosleyautoclub.com
If you live close to Wauseon, OH, go check out the national Crosley Auto Club show at the Fulton County fairgrounds, usually the first or second weekend in July. Free, family-friendly, and the most fun of any car show I’ve been to. See the club website for details.
If you mean the rear bumper, because the overriders stick up and limit the tailgate travel - nope. This is the way Crosley built it. Many owner do turn the overriders over or remove them so that the tailgate can go down flat, but then you have to make custom supports for it.
Ha ha, right? I think this nickname is in the spirit of Mighty Mouse - it's small, but impressive for its size. :^) The Crosley Auto Club has two nice articles on these engines... crosleyautoclub.com/Mighty_Tin.html crosleyautoclub.com/EngineTree/Crosley_Eng_Tree-1.html
I am a cheerful guy! At the time of the video, the car didn't have functional lights or a license plate. But they are grandfathered in, and if working as built and carrying a plate they are legal on the road. I drive my current Crosley around town quite a bit.
My Aunt drove all the way from California to North Carolina in Crosley station wagon. They had all their worldly positions on board. That's was about 1954, 55.
Yoiks! That would be a long trip in a heavily-laden Crosley!
Thanks for sharing! In the 1960's they put bigger Engines in the Crosley's and Drag Raced them! Ron PTL USA
Funny story -- Powell Crosley's house (in Cincinnati, now a museum open for tours) was right around the corner from the apartment where I lived the first four years of my life. Sadly, I moved to Indiana about 12 years ago and never toured it.
It looks like the love child of an English and American car , I like it a lot 👍🏻
Ha ha! In some ways, yes.
At 77, I remember my dad in the 1950's - a true odd car collector - he bought a Crosley Wagon Deluxe. It was red with "woody" trim. He then traded it for two Crosley sedans. One night on our way to a friend's house he spotted that red woody wagon with a for sale sign. We finished the trip to our friends place with TWO Crosleys, mom drove the beige sedan with dad proudly at the wheel of the wagon. We ended up with another grey wagon until one day my dad traded all four cars for two Studebakers. One time he bought all the cars from a funeral home - five 1949 Buicks...
A nice restauration and also a nice four cylinder sound! Greetings from Germany!
Thank you! It’s a fun little car. A video of the restoration at a more advanced point is available, including drive-by footage: ua-cam.com/video/q3621ap7Fic/v-deo.html
I’ve enjoyed my visits to Germany. Thanks for watching!
In 1952 I saw my first Crosley in my town. I saw only one more in all these years. Cute and interesting. Also had a neighbor that owned a Henry J. he had a Kaiser Frazer in his garage. Cars most never see much less touch. Thanks for the memory.
Back in the early 1960's a neighbor had Kaiser Fraser, pretty cool looking car. My dad was a Hudson man.
I had a swamp buggy with a Crosley engine and that 3 speed transmission it had a second transmission to gear it down for more power I was amazed with that over head cam .
The engine far outlived the car, and was in production for various uses clear into the 1970s. It's a great little motor.
A friend of mine in Paducah KY has about 50 Crosley. If Crosley made it he has it.
He has performance parts that were made for Crosley. He has a 1 of 1 Crosley fiberglass body and the factory mold for it. Only 1 was ever made when the factory burned down. He has a Crosley powered mini speed boat and a Crosley fire truck.
He built a Crosley to break the land speed record for its class. Its amazing to walk through his warehouse and see all the cars that have been restored. He has generators that Crosley built for ww2. Crosley refrigerator. Radios you name it.
Another friend bought a car with no motor or transmission and I converted it
And put a honda goldwing gl1500 motor in it then custom paint job. I restored cars for many years and the Crosley was a fun job. We covered every inch of the inside body panels with dynamat noise damper then made custom door panels. Headliner. Custom auto carpet and leather interior. The seats were reshaped
With extra padding. All lights were led. New wiring with modern fuse and relay panel. All new brake.turn. tail. Flasher and headlights. 4 wheel disc brakes.
Wipers with delay. Was a great driving car when finished. It would cruise all day at 75mph. I wish I had one I would do another goldwing swap. I might sell my mercedes diesel and buy a Crosley or a original mini to restomod.
Fun cars to play with.
I know that guy! He has a wonderful collection and has done some neat things with his cars.
I have a friend here in east Texas that has 4 Crosleys. He said he has had them since the 50's. They need restoring. I believe one is a station wagon 2 are cars and one is a pickup. He is working on a 49 JD tractor that he got from me. It runs but needs a new front end and he has one he has to go get, it is down close to his dad's plce close to the lake. I played with that tractor many years and never knew the front end needed replacing. I never noticed it being hard to steer but he did the first time he got on it. lol
I really enjoyed the film. Thanks!
I owned three Crosley's in the 60's. One was a 48 wagon. Mine had the cast iron block. Most Crosley owners converted their cars to the cast block due to the problems with the Cobra. We used to call them sheet metal blocks. I must say that I haven't seen a Cobra Block in decades. It's cool to that you have one that is in running condition.
Thanks. These are fun little cars. The tin block is very unique - people really stare at car shows!
A good portion of the block was certainly made of sheet metal. It was furnace brazed together with a copper alloy, hence the name "COpper BRAzed". It worked very well in the application it was originally made for, but it couldn't handle the rigors of an automotive application where it had to run in cold weather. The cast iron block with which they replaced it turned out to not be a whole lot heavier.
Copper brazed in oven . Yes I had 19:49 ciba engine
Learned to drive in a Crosley.
1960 I was 10.
Neighbor had 10 acres mowed field to drive around on.
The car was chopped, so open.
That was a thrilling, safe way to learn.
He also had a ‘56 Porsche we did not get to drive.
Very cool.
When i was about 5 in 1953 or so my dad had that car and one day i got in it and rolled it out into the street. Boy did i catch hell!!!
You have a very rare Crosley their are only a few Crosley left with the original copper brazed engine. According to a friend in the Crosley club only a hand full are left with working cobra engines. Also your oil filter was an original option from the factory.
Thanks, Brandon. Working CoBra engines are indeed rare. It's fun to open the hood and show it off at car shows. Most folks have never seen anything other than a cast iron or aluminum engine. Thankfully, good modern antifreeze helps prevent the internal corrosion than most of these engine succumbed to back in the day.
Great walkaround! Thank you for posting!
I love all the room around the engine.
Pretty typical for cars of this era. I've had quite a few (see below), and they are all pleasures to work on.
itisgood.org/auto-biography/
Nice video! They have such an unmistakable sound.
My high school buddy had one just like this in 1956. We used to go tooling around South Bend, Indiana in that buggy. Great fun. It sure did slow down going up hills though. Great memories!
Wow! I not only learned about your car, but got a lesson in double-clutching.
I saw some Crosleys being used as clown cars when I was a kid, and I’ve been fascinated with them ever since. These cars were sturdier than I thought, if yours is any indication. Good luck with it!
If the East Germans had Crosleys instead of Trabants, the Soviet Union will still exist today.
Many Crosleys went on to extended lives as golf carts, clown cars, Shriners parade cars, etc. It's amazing how many of these exist today, given less than 100,000 were built 1939-1952.
Sweet ride! Thanks for the video. My son has my '48 wagon that I had restored in high school.
The wagon body was introduced in November of 47 as a 48 model. It was the start of the flat sided pickup bodies instead of the earlier sedan fender style.
The 1948 Station Wagon was the most popular model Crosley built with 23,489 made. Crosley was the top builder of Station Wagons in the world in 1948. They were the first completely steel bodied wagon made, beating Plymouth (who normally gets credit) by a year. The Jeep wagon body was earlier but most historians considered that a truck or carry all, you decide.
I had a Crosley Wagon in the mid 50s. A fun car! It would blow the electrical fuse, so I put in a small copper tube in instead of the fuse. (No Recommended ha ha ha) The tube would heat up!
That is in fact the name of the Crosley Facebook group... "Crosley... A Fun Car!" They are still a blast to own, drive, work on, and share at shows. The club is the most fun I've ever had in any car club.
Built in my hometown of Marion, Indiana.
During the depression, Powell Crosley made a radio for $7 comparable to other radios costing over $100. Then he created a radio station (first 500W, then 5,000W, then 50,000W, and during the depression (12M to 6 AM) it went to 500,000W), so people could listen to the radios. I suggest it was this frugality that led to such spartan vehicles. I don't think Crosley anticipated the post-war economic boom.
He was definitely aiming to be the value option - reasonable features at the lowest price. As you say, that’s not what people were looking for as the 1950s dawned.
Very interesting auto, small, efficient, yet spacious inside... so loud though...! Just previous to watching this video, I watched an Austin 7 test drive, so quiet, what a difference...!
It's particularly loud in the video because there are no interior panels to damp the noise. But Crosleys are pretty noisy in the best of times.
I just watched your video again and love it even more than first couple of times. Really nicely done.
A lovely little big car !
I’ve had a bunch of old cars that had to be double clutched, especially when the grease was cold in the transmission. If you let the clutch out in neutral between each gear while upshifting and don’t poke around about it, get it on in the gear after you push the clutch back in from neutral, you won’t grind as much. I can tell from listening to you shift it. Also ,when you downshift and go to neutral and let the clutch out for a second and speed it up to where you hear it sounding like the rpm that it will be spinning when you are driving in that gear and ground speed ,then push the clutch back in and downshift so you’ll match the rotating mass spinning fast enough to mesh.
I've gotten better at it since the video, but it's pretty hard to nail it with the Crosley because they operate across such a wide RPM range.
Floating the gears
As teenagers we learned to use engine rpms and double clutch w/o using the clutch. For us it was just a gimmick and really not needed. Double clutching was the norm for truckers many years ago. A friend's mom had the clutch cable break on her Fiat and used this technique to get around for a few weeks till she could replace it. The Fiat was so light she would turn off the engine at stop lights and stick it in 1st. Just hitting the key in gear got it going.
My dad had one of these, a black wagon, sometime between 1956-59, on the island of Guam; thanks for showing your car and doing a thorough presentation!
This is a nice video we had one of those one I was a kid
I saw a Ford truck with mechanical brakes that had the rear drums replaced with disk brakes. They were still mechanical but worked much better. Just thought you might think about that possibility. Nice car. Looks like you are doing a great job with it.
Crosley’s actually came with disc brakes in 49 or 50, at least the Hot Shots did. But, like the COBRA engine, they proved problematic.
We had a post WWII Willy's Overland (Jeep Station wagon 4-63) built as one unit. For a good read try the late S M Kaminsky detective series Toby Peters. He tools around Hollywood in his Crosley, helping the Hollywood types. Thanks. Narragansett Bay
Hmm... going to have to look up those books. Willys had the all-steel body fist, but it was on a truck chassis. Crosley usually gets the credit for the all-steel automotive station wagon.
Nifty little car! Before I was born, my family had a ca. 1950 Crosley wagon, similar pale yellow to your example. Somehow, so I heard, they managed to strap a piano on top of it, when moving to another home; not sure how they managed not to tip it over! Somewhere in my collection of memorabilia, I have a color slide photo of that Crosley, parked next to my Mom's first car, a 1938 Hupmobile, and an MG-TD...they used to do road rallies in the Washington, D.C. area back then.
The Crosley powerplant eventually formed the basis for Lou Fageol's (famous Unlimited hydroplane driver of the 1950s) "Fageol 44" outboard motor--one of the earliest 4-stroke outboards. Further iterations of this were made by Crofton Engineeering, Homelite (by then, the engine had been enlarged to around 60 cu. in., and 55 HP), and finally Fisher-Pierce w/ their "Bearcat" variant, all the way thru 1972.
Thanks for the tour and test drive!
Wow! Crosleys have about a quarter-ton (500lb) carrying capacity, and that includes passengers. The piano must have squashed it right down onto the bump stops. 😆 Crosley engines, especially the cast-iron derivative, were excellent power plants that found their way into many uses for many, many years.
September 1995. There was a 50th anniversary for the end of WWII in Hawaii through Waikiki. I rode as special duty officer (Honolulu PD) behind the Grand Marshall's car. The Grand Marshal was Bob Hope. He rode in a Crosley.
Willys Overland introduced the first al steel station wagon in 1946. It remained in production thru 1964.
Yeah, that's a point of contention. Willys was first with the all steel body, but it was on a truck chassis. Crosley guys like to say this was the first all-steel station wagon car. :^) I'll spot you the Willys. Remarkably, tiny little Crosley did sell more station wagons than any other brand in 1948, mostly on the strength of this very practical design.
@@mparkhhunter yea willy did have one but crosley beat them to market bye more than a mouth selling there cars in department stores before any willys dealers got any cars
There's a picture of 2-year-old me in a 1954 with a ball peen hammer in my diapers only pounding on the left rear fender of our bright yellow and red Crosley station wagon. It had a blown up motor and some other problems it was going to the wrecking yard. But Dad thought it would be a cute picture. Little did he know he was raising a mechanic.
"Percussive maintenance" is still a go-to for me. Ha ha!
Very nice working restoration! Great little car!
I have almost the exact same thing. I have a yellow 48 wagon body, chassis and a spare chassis plus several boxes of parts. I have been slowly putting it back together as well. I also have the so called tin engine that I don’t know the condition of but have several boxes of parts to build a cast engine. This gave me the needed boost to get back at it. Thank you.
Good for you! My son (in middle school at the time) was the one who spurred me to get to work on my car. They are relatively simple and easy to figure out. If you haven't found it yet, check out the Crosley Automobile Club ( crosleyautoclub.com ). Great vendor support for most parts, friendly club folks with good advice, and lots of fun. The national meet is held in Wauseon, OH around the 4th of July each year. There are regions around the country with local meets.
I have a newer video that shows the car in a much more complete state, with some more driving... ua-cam.com/video/q3621ap7Fic/v-deo.html
In January of 1948, I came home from the hospital with my bassinet in the back of my parents Crosley.
Great story!
Many thanks for the video 🙂 I'd be very happy with one of these just to run to and from work 🙂
They are a ton of fun to drive and work on. Good little in-town commuters, as long as you don't mind the threat of death if you ever have an accident.
I am old enough to remember Crosley cars. Don’t make fun of them - they are the fastest cars available back then. It was obvious. If you were watching a main roadway, you would see a line of other makes lined up. And guess which was in FRONT of the line? Yes, a Crosley! Shazam!
Ha ha ha! That's pretty funny...
I have never seen such a small American-designed car. To my European eyes the quirky styling, tiny size and unconventional engineering are more typical of East European cars from the 1950s.
Crosleys are often mistaken for foreign cars in the US. But they are a unique and very American story. The club website has lots more details and history… crosleyautoclub.com
I was thinking the same thing.
They had a inverted bucket tappets almost exactly like a Suzuki 750 g s. type overhead cam shaft driven cam very high-tech engine for the time the outboard, crosley.. motor sold by homelite where that engine they made 55 horsepower with a dual carburetor setup and some other things
My uncle had a crosley engine that come off of an old reefer unit tractor-trailer in the 50s
Some company should start making them again
This would be a cool car to drive down to the beach with. After it’s restoration of course
My father had a 1950 Willey's Jeep station wagon, which sat 5 & had solid doors! As a child, I hated that this
auto was our family car then, because it was so ugly, but looking at this Crosley, I now realize it wasn't the worst!
Ha ha! Yes, the Willys wagon was a huge step up from a Crosley.
By the company who brought you the Crosley "Shelvedor" refrigerator.
Yup. Crosley pioneered the refrigerator with shelves in the doors. Until the patent expired, other companies had their models stand in front of the open door to hide the lack of shelves.
Somewhere on an old phone I have a set of side-by-side pics of a '48ish Crosley sedan and a 2008 Toyota Yaris hatchback. They're about even in length and height but the Crosley is MUCH narrower and has a shorter wheelbase. It would've been interesting to run an banana-box loading test between something like the Yaris or the Honda Fit I have now with a Crosley wagon, which has a nice low and deep load floor (like the Fit but very much unlike the Yaris).
I took photos next to my 2000 Honda Insight, also a very small car. The Crosley is narrow for two reasons - (1) Crosley dealers mostly sold appliances, so the car was designed to fit through the double doors of a store, and (2) they could be packed side-by-side in a boxcar for shipping. Despite the size, they are surprisingly roomy inside. I'm guessing they'd do well at the banana box test!.
When I was a kid my dad had a cast iron Crosley engine with transmission. He’d said someone had it in a boat, so I always assumed the water pump was a marine adaptation, but obviously it wasn’t. I drove that engine 10,000 miles sitting still in the garage. It shifts easily when not running! To my disappointment, he gave it away when we moved.
Great memories! My son was 11 when I got the Crosley and spent a lot of time helping me work on it, and taking it for imaginary drives in the garage.
Cool old car 👍
very nice car. so why did they dissapear/
Quality control problems sullied the brand’s reputation. But mostly, it was a small, slow car when America was excited about bigger and faster. Once the big 3 (Ford, Chevy & Plymouth) got production up to speed after WW2 and lowered prices, a Crosley wasn’t enough cheaper to be a compelling option.
I love station wagons and regret that new ones are so rare in the US.
Me too. The crossovers are basically tall station wagons, but they're not as cool. One of our current cars is a Ford Flex, which is a wonderful near-wagon.
Very well done video. I learned a lot!
Glad you enjoyed it! If you'd like to see the car in a more finished state, here's another video from 2020... ua-cam.com/video/q3621ap7Fic/v-deo.html
Cincinnati Ohio born and made interesting thing when the company went under nobody bought them out in 52 they never merged or anything
Really cool I got a question for you though
He said normal cruising speed about 45-50 Max but if you want to do kind of like some people do a change the rear axle ratio could you get that thing to cruise on down the road faster?
Surprised how fast that thing lit up to.
Even 70° it doesn't really matter it's just fired right off.
Engineered in Cincinnati, but most of the manufacturing was done in Marion, Indiana. When they closed in 1952 the Aerojet company bought them out, mostly for the rights to the engine. Service Motors, a New York dealer, purchased a ton of spare parts and remains in business as the largest Crosley vendor today.
The gearing is a balance between power and speed. With only 26.5 horsepower, you can't push a lot of air. I have a modified Crosley with 50% higher final drive, and it maxes out around 56mph due to wind resistance before the engine hits max RPM's. With the stock gearing, 1st and 2nd are actually pretty snappy around town... but they only get you to 20mph.
@@mparkhhunter that's neat I always wondered about the history of them I just knew about the Cincinnati connection I didn't know there was more to it thanks.
COOL
Absolutely Love it 💓
man I would love to own a Crosley...
Dam a lot of revs in first 😂 yes I had a cobra it was a truck I just never remember winding it up that tight ouch.
Heck, I only revved it up about halfway! Sure sounds like a lot if your ear is tuned for the flatheads of the era that maxed out around 3200rpm. The Crosley engine would cruise at 5,000+rpm, and stock could wind to 7,000rpm periodically without harm.
What kind of gas mileage do you get from your crosley preacher
Great video many thanks
You are welcome. Crosley claimed 35-50mpg back in the day. My gauge doesn't work so I haven't tracked it, but other Crosley owners say the 35mph estimate is ballpark.
Awww. It's so cute
Great car!
Bliping the throttle helps while upshifting also.
It's mostly about rev-matching the input from the engine to the output to the rear end. Upshifting wouldn't help, except it would slow the shift down. Mostly I find that I just need to be patient and give the car a second or two in neutral. I've gotten better since this video was recorded.
Which engine is used in this car? I mean Crosley had their own developed engine? and if they had their own Developed engine, what happened to the rights of their engine after crosley's bankruptcy, now who holds the right of their engine?
Crosley purchased the engine design from engineer Lloyd Taylor. After Crosley closed, several firms owned & built the engines, concluding with Homelite in the ‘70s - used as outboard motors. Detailed history here… crosleyautoclub.com/EngineTree/Crosley_Eng_Tree.html
@@mparkhhunter the bus company fagole had them powering air conditioners on the bus'es
thanks for posting your vid my dad had several crosleys my fav was his 46 ser number 333 .been looking for it for years he also had a 48 i think yellow with a ford 60 horse in id love to know if that one survived too he brought it to mexaco when he was still in service and had a maroon tuck and roll leather interior put in to drove a few times cross country back in the fifty's i still have a ton of parts in the barn for them .fun cars
Thanks for the memories! Check out the Crosley Auto Club (crosleyautoclub.com). They have a registry and might be able to find your dad’s old cars by serial number. Also lots of folks who’d be interested in that barn full of parts. 😁
Man, that thing sounds like riding in a galvanized metal bucket on wheels
It would help a little bit if I had the door cards and headliner in. As it sits, it pretty much IS a metal bucket on wheels!
I’ve got a homemade garden tractor that someone put a 1949 crosley engine on it
Many garden tractors were built with the T92 transmission originally intended for the Crosley. Power King and Speedex, among others.
Sweet. The Crosley engines were nice little power units that found their way into plenty of projects. As michigandon says, the transmission and differential also were used by various manufacturers. If you need help getting your engine going, check out the Crosley Auto Club (crosleyautoclub.com) for advice and parts vendors..
MY CONVERTIBLE WAS A 1953 WITH HYD DISK BRAKES LAST YEAR FOR THA CAR FIRST AMERICAN CAR WITH DISK BRAKES
Crosleys were the first with hydraulic disc brakes all the way around. That was in 1949, and for that year only. Crosley went out of business in 1952, but some cars may have been sold in 1953 and titled accordingly. The brake systems swapped, so someone may have retrofit the discs onto your later car.
BUT MY FIRST CAR WAS A CROSLEY A BLACK CONVERTIBLE
AND YES THEY HAD A SHEET MEATL MOTOR
THE TRANSMISSION'S WERE USED IT ALL TYPES OF OTHER MACHINES LIKE
POWER KING TRACTORS AND TRENCHERS A VERY VERSATILE TRANS
In fact, the transmission is still manufactured today!
Love it!
I enjoy all old micros and mini's. & had had quite a few varieties of them back in the muscle car days when small cars & especially small foreign cars were not popular or even hated by "Real Americans" cars like Isettas & Austin 7, Bantamsm, Citroens and such like i have had when running units when found could be had for $50 or less all day long There was one of these Crosley wagons and a cool homebrew model T doodle bug sitting out in the Desert by an old miners shack in a short box canyon near where i live in the northern Mojave Desert, which is now part of Death Valley Nat Park and protected. It was a very complete unmolested car, Not full of bullet holes and urban a-hole destructive vandalism done to it, It sat there for well over 50 years that i know of, not a bit of paint left on the clean straight body, beautiful rust oxide surface patina. i always wanted to go haul that little jewell out before it was found & shot full of holes up by some urban weekend warriors & city idiots. Last time i saw it was a little over 20 years ago, and then the Model T doodlebug was gone & I am sure the Crosley is long gone today as many old cars and mining equipment left out in the desert at mining claims & hermit dwellings have been either shot to pieces or removed/stolen by people looking for antiques, rare parts, yard art collectables or worse by modern day scrap metal recyclers.The big scrap metal drives for the war effort back during WW2 saw the removal of many old pre-war vehicles that were not hidden in isolated hard to access places out in the deserts and mountains of the southwest.I was fortunate to see many of those behicles that were just too remote to be stolen back in the day before modern treasure hunters and google earth explorers and their drones came into existence and have exposed & exploited and thus destroyed so many of those old cabins, homesteads and mining cabins & claims.
Thanks for sharing your memories! I love finding old evidence of humans in odd places. Hopefully the Crosley and the Doodlebug found homes with folks who appreciated them.
A very basic simple reliable car, that tail door would be a bit of a pain, the pedals ( accelerator/brake/clutch ) are normal i am guessing, the other car near the start looked like a Ford Falcon BA XR/6/8?? I did not get a good look at it. Double de clutching takes a lot of practice too perfect!
Basic and simple, yes. Reliability was not something Crosleys were known for, although they got much better over time. The pedals are normal. Double-clutching takes practice. The car in the background was probably my 2002 Ford Focus SVT.
@@mparkhhunteryes, still if you can such a car as this or a Model A then you should be able to drive ANY car really, modern vehicle are much much easier to drive but not as challenging or interesting very little reward that old cars give you!!
Geezus...I thought the brake drum was a centrifugal clutch for a go-cart!🤣😂😅
They are comedically small. But then, the car only weighs 1200lbs and spends most of its life below 45mph. Properly adjusted, they're... adequate.
@@mparkhhunter It is a neat little vehicle, I wish you many hours of enjoyment and relaxation with it!
Didn't they use this model of car in the film Porky's 2
Not sure about that, but there's one on the front lawn in the Animal House movie.
Wow you are brave , lol
It does feel like driving a particularly small and flimsy tin can. Takes some courage until you get used to it.
6v車かぁ。バッテリー手配するのも大変そう。ダイナモと同軸で駆動してる赤いポンプみたいのなんだろう?ウォーターポンプ？
The car is 6 volt, positive ground. On the exhaust side of the engine, the generator is driven by a pulley, and a shaft on the back of the generator drives the red water pump via a rubber coupling. It's surprisingly reliable.
👁 HAD THAT SAME WAGON BUT A 1946 THE EXACT SAME PUDDIN YELLOW TAN COLOUR
Hey buddy, where can you buy parts for crosleys? Thanks in advance!
Actually, there are three great sources for most parts: Service Motors, Yankee Crosley, and Dave Edwards. Here’s a list ... crosleyautoclub.com/PartsSuppliers.html
If it would do 70 it was only downhill with a strong tailwind
Seam to remember something about Crowley engines for other uses something military??? Early drones or boats or something. Anyone remember?
Crosley engines had many uses. In the military, they powered generators and bomb bay doors. In civilian life, they were used to power refrigerator units on semi trucks, as inboard and outboard boat motors, and even as airplane engines.
@@mparkhhunter yes crosley had the contract to build the generators during the war
he lost money on them but he wanted the motor for his post war car
What watch is that? It looks cool.
That’s my old Pebble smartwatch. Always-on e-paper display and a week of battery life. The company got absorbed by FitBit. I still miss the simpler Pebbles!
No synchronization meant you had to rev the engine to the right rpm for a gear change? Those are really cute cars. When all is said and done, most people don't need a car bigger than that. I bet it got and still gets phenomenal gas mileage. But could'a, should'a, would'a!
Thanks for watching! Yes, without synchro you need to match revs to shift without a “crunch.” I get it right about 70% of the time. 😅 Crosley owners claimed 35-50mpg back in the day, which is still quite impressive today! Modern cars are FAR more comfortable, capable, and safer though. I enjoy driving my Crosley around town or in country roads, but I’m always scanning the environment and hoping nobody crashes into me. 😮
Here’s another video of the car once I got it painted, with some more driving footage.
ua-cam.com/video/q3621ap7Fic/v-deo.htmlsi=lQCQYrdbFfuL2L1d
@@mparkhhunter Yes, being in such a small car gives new meaing to the expression "defensive driving!"
Le son du moteur est le même que ma Renault 4 L
Nice. I am guessing the Renault is also small and must be revved to high RPM's to make power.
Americans: european cars are so exotic and cool, we should go after that
the "european style" american cars:
Powel Crosley wasn't looking at the European model so much as trying to develop a cheap, simple, "second car" for American families. He was 6'4" tall and fit easily in the front seat of a Crosley. Other design constraints - like the width - were determined by shipping and delivery considerations. They would fit two abreast in a railroad boxcar, and could go through double-doors to be sold from the floor of an appliance store. (Crosley was a big radio and appliance manufacturer.)
@@mparkhhunter I know, I was making a joke about the many post-war attempts of americans to recreate those "exotic cars" they got their hands on during the war, we all know how those attempts went. Crosley's cars look exactly like the kind of car someone over there tried to emulate after seeing a Fiat Topolino (even tho I gotta say, it would've been a better choice as a first car than its contemporary mausoleums on wheels. I love vintage cars, but american ones from the 30s up to the 80s have always been exaggerate in terms of size)
, mas você tem que aprender a condução de carro! Não sabe trocar marchas, muito tempo em marchas reduzidas..arranha AS engrenagens na troca de marchas. Parabéns por preservar esta relíquia.
Thanks. It isn't easy to shift these, even with practice. The transmission has straight-cut gears, so even with double-clutching it is a challenge and requires patience.
Stamped steel rod for crankshaft?
Nope. The block and head (single unit) were pressed and brazed steel. The crankcase was cast aluminum. The crankshaft was generally cast or nodular iron, although they also used some steel crankshafts.
What year was it that Disc brakes were factory installed ?
Crosley pioneered 4-wheel Goodyear Hydradisc brakes in 1949 on ALL their cars. Talk about being ahead of the curve! Alas, they didn't test for winter conditions. Salty roads caused the calipers to corrode and fail, so in 1950 they switched to 9" hydraulic drums, which were still a lot of brake for a small car.
What is your guess what this car is worth ?
I recently sold it for $4500. That’s ballpark. I’d done more work in it since this video. Nicer cars will go for more.
Car toon
Ha ha! Rat Fink would be right at home hanging out the window.
Not a comfortable ride also
Reminds me of model T on the waltons
The suspension technology dates from the Model T / Model A era: live axles front and rear, leaf springs, lever action shocks that only damp in one direction, and cable-operated mechanical brakes. This was really out-of-date by the 1940s.
Who else is here because of James May?
Ha ha! Was fun to see a Crosley featured on Top Gear: Eurocrash! They did some very Crosley things: get blown around on the highway, crawl uphill in low gear, and prank James by moving the car. 😁 That said - they’re more reliable than his car was, and it should have been able to cruise at 45-50mph. For waaaayyy more info go check out… crosleyautoclub.com
If you live close to Wauseon, OH, go check out the national Crosley Auto Club show at the Fulton County fairgrounds, usually the first or second weekend in July. Free, family-friendly, and the most fun of any car show I’ve been to. See the club website for details.
I thouught it was 60's
A car the size of microcars from the '60s, built in the '40s, with a lot of '30s technology.
this is a very very strange car for America
America 100% agreed. In the age of bigger & faster, Crosley had a hard time selling small economy cars and went out of business in 1952.
I think your bumper is on upside down
If you mean the rear bumper, because the overriders stick up and limit the tailgate travel - nope. This is the way Crosley built it. Many owner do turn the overriders over or remove them so that the tailgate can go down flat, but then you have to make custom supports for it.
“…the Mighty Tin…”?
Ha ha, right? I think this nickname is in the spirit of Mighty Mouse - it's small, but impressive for its size. :^)
The Crosley Auto Club has two nice articles on these engines...
crosleyautoclub.com/Mighty_Tin.html
crosleyautoclub.com/EngineTree/Crosley_Eng_Tree-1.html
No way this is legal to drive on the street in the US. Hey Mate, do you always laugh after every sentence?
I am a cheerful guy! At the time of the video, the car didn't have functional lights or a license plate. But they are grandfathered in, and if working as built and carrying a plate they are legal on the road. I drive my current Crosley around town quite a bit.
EL CARRO MAS FEO QUE HE VISTO.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 😉
Cool