Spring Plowing

The snow has melted in Southern Connecticut; the frost is out of the ground and we're finally able to do our spring plowing. My trusty tractor, with which I prepare my modest vegetable garden, has magneto ignition, a two-speed planetary transmission and its oil level is checked with a petcock. "Aha!" you say. "It must be a converted Model T Ford like the one on your page." Well no, it isn't, nor is it a Fordson, the agricultural evolution of the T (with a gear, not planetary, transmission).

My tractor has a 6.6 hp T-head engine, full pressure lubrication, two speeds in reverse and only two wheels. It's a 1958 Gravely Model LI, and it's equipped with the miraculous sod-busting rotary plow that deep-tills the soil so well you can sift it in your hands.

Benjamin Franklin Gravely was a West Virginia inventor who adapted a hand cultivator with an Indian motorcycle engine to create the Model D, an odd-looking machine with the engine inside its single wheel. In time this evolved into the Model L, later called the Convertible, with a one-cylinder engine at the rear and implements mounted on the front. The four-foot snow blade will push more than a foot of powder, and the sturdy rotary mower makes short work of any grass - and small trees if the 3/8-inch thick brush blade is installed. There's a whole myriad of attachments and accessories available, but the plow, mower and snow blade meet my needs completely.

For a while a division of Studebaker Corporation, Gravely tractors are now made by Ariens Company, and the L and Convertible models are no longer part of the mix. The old Gravelys have a loyal following however, and parts are readily available. My garden is now plowed and partly planted, but I'm going to keep my Gravely forever.

What's an Iltis?

From time to time, my daughter Harriet and I go to Volkswagen shows. She's restoring her grandmother's 1965 Beetle, and we like to see what other people are doing. It's also an opportunity to buy parts (although, truth to tell, you could build a complete VeeDub almost from scratch out of parts bought on the internet). Summer before last we checked out the Bug-A-Fair, held at the Terryville, Connecticut, fairgrounds in August.

What to our wondering eyes should appear but the vehicle at right. We've known about military Volkswagens, of course, starting with the World War II Kubelwagen, its civilian grandchild the "Thing" (called by purists with its proper name Type 181), and the ultimate military VW, the amphibious Schwimmwagen. This thing is none of these. It's an Iltis.

The Iltis is a NATO vehicle, supplied to German, Belgian and French armies in Europe. Built from 1978 to 1987, it has a 1.7 liter solid-lifter Golf engine and a modified Audi 5000 transmission with full-time drive to the rear wheels. Drive to the front can be manually engaged.

This particular Iltis is the Canadian version, built by Bombardier in Québec. Bombardier builds airplanes, subway cars, and Amtrak's Acela Express, but perhaps the Bombardier product most familiar to you is the Ski-Doo, whose name has become almost synonymous with "snowmobile." The Canadian Iltis differs from its European counterpart in small details like lighting, the brush guard, and a much more substantial canopy.

Why is it called "Iltis?" Iltis (Latin name Mustela putorius) is a European polecat, akin to the ferret (Mustela putorius furo). Iltis belongs to the family "Marderartigen," group "Stinkmarder." So now you know.

There are so many VW sites on the internet it's hard to know where to start. One good place is Steve Mierz's Common Gear page.

The End of Rover as We Know It?

On Thursday last, the production lines at MG Rover Group's automobile factory in Longbridge, on the southwest side of Birmingham, England, came to a halt. Stocks of parts were drying up as suppliers demanded cash on delivery. Rover's fortunes since assimilation into the star-crossed British Leyland empire in 1967 have been on a roller coaster, but the latest faltering deal, with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, rendered the end of Rover a reality show in the making.

I lusted for a Rover after driving my uncle's 2000TC on California's Angeles Crest Highway in 1968. Two years later, I bought one, as rows of new Rovers sat unclaimed on the New York docks, for the grand sum of $3,395, nearly $1,000 off the sticker price. My mother, seen here at Easter 1970, was impressed.

The "poor man's Rolls," some called it, from a time when the earlier P4 and P5 Rovers were favored by bankers and solicitors - the near-luxury niche occupied by Volvo, Audi and Lexus today. The so-called "P6" (P for "postwar," 6 being the sixth such design), the 2000 series, marked Rover's entry into the sports sedan market that would be so successful for BMW just a few years later. In 1965, Rover licensed the 3.5-liter aluminum V8 engine abandoned by General Motors, creating the 3500 model that debuted two years later. The engine stayed in production for over 35 years, being used most recently in Land Rovers (now built by Ford) and the Morgan Plus 8.

I drove my Rover for fifteen years and 120,000 miles, amazing my friends who said it simply couldn't be done, that Rovers were too unreliable and hard to fix. The P6 Rover was indeed hard to fix, but for a true enthusiast no automobile is too unreliable. I soon knew every inch of that car. When it was truly worn out and in dire need of restoration I gave it away.

Some will say the end of Rover as we knew it came when BL, as British Leyland became known, replaced the P6 with the SD1 model, a less-sophisticated car showing Triumph influence, in 1976. Others point to the Hondification of Rover, the new 800 series (sold as "Sterling" in the USA) that was a Honda/Acura Legend in all but nameplate. The current Rovers, the 75, 45 and 25 models, are British designs once again, but hardly the spirited, nimbly-handling bank vaults that were the P6 series.

As this episode of the CarPort is posted, the British government has come up with a £6.5 million loan, enough to keep production going for a week, and the MG Rover directors have pledged £49 million in collateral toward bank loans. The Chinese meanwhile, sensing a buyer's market, are biding their time. Will there continue to be a Rover as we know it? We don't yet know, nor do we know when we will know.

Intelligent Design

John Zachary DeLorean, who died March 19 at age 80, was described by the Washington Post as "credited with creating the overhead-cam engine, concealed windshield wipers, the lane-change turn signal, vertically stacked headlights, racing stripes and an emphasis on cockpitlike driver consoles."

Well, if DeLorean truly created the overhead cam it was news to Peugeot, Stutz and Crosley, all of whom had overhead cams well before Pontiac's 1966 six-cylinder engine. Pontiac was noteworthy for its belt-driven cam, but even that was not groundbreaking - a timing belt had appeared in 1962 on the German-built Glas S1004. DeLorean's overhead cam was clearly a case of evolution, not creation.

Pontiac's cammer was conceived not for performance, but for an air-cooled engine concept. In order to get better heat transfer, DeLorean wanted to use liquid-filled fins on the block, and an overhead cam was a means of dispensing with pushrods, which would have obstructed air flow. Air cooling was dropped, but the belt-driven cam, developed in conjunction with Uniroyal, stayed. The cammer became the base engine for the 1966 Tempest. Although having the same bore and stroke as the pushrod Chevrolet six, the Pontiac engine shared only its crankshaft.

A version with a Rochester Quadrajet and dual exhausts was rated at 207 bhp, and became the heart of a "Sprint" version of the Tempest, though no threat to the already-legendary GTO. Little known, however, is the fact that Pontiac engineers experimented with overhead cams for V8 engines, including a novel arrangement with a belt at the rear.

To what extent did John DeLorean "invent" these features? No doubt many other engineers were involved, but included in the more than 200 patents that DeLorean claimed are disclosures for the ohc six's distributor and accessory drive, which incorporates the belt tensioner, and the rear mounted belt drive on the V8. DeLorean's official obituary says "[e]very car built in the world today contains at least one of his creations." What DeLorean creations does your car have?