The sleeve valve is a type of valve mechanism for piston engines, distinct from the usual poppet valve. Sleeve valve engines saw use in a number of pre–World War II luxury cars and in the United States in the Willys-Knight car and light truck. They subsequently fell from use due to advances in poppet-valve technology, including sodium cooling, and the Knight system double sleeve engine's tendency to burn a lot of lubricating oil or to seize due to lack of it. The Scottish Argyll company used its own, much simpler and more efficient, single sleeve system (Burt-McCollum) in its cars, a system which, after extensive development, saw substantial use in British aircraft engines of the 1940s, such as the Napier Sabre, Bristol Hercules, Centaurus, and the promising but never mass-produced Rolls-Royce Crecy, only to be supplanted by the jet engines.
The Daimler Company Limited, before 1910 known as the Daimler Motor Company Limited, was an independent British motor vehicle manufacturer founded in London by H. J. Lawson in 1896, which set up its manufacturing base in Coventry. The company bought the right to the use of the Daimler name simultaneously from Gottlieb Daimler and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft of Cannstatt, Germany. After early financial difficulty and a reorganisation of the company in 1904, the Daimler Motor Company was purchased by Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA) in 1910, which also made cars under its own name before the Second World War. In 1933, BSA bought the Lanchester Motor Company and made it a subsidiary of the Daimler Company.
Frederick William Lanchester, was an English polymath and engineer who made important contributions to automotive engineering and to aerodynamics, and co-invented the topic of operations research.
The Lanchester Motor Company Limited was a British car manufacturer in active trade between 1899 and 1955. Though the Lanchester Motor Company Limited is still registered as an active company and accounts are filed each year, the marque has been dormant since. As of 2014 it is marked as "non-trading".
The Silver Wraith was the first post-war Rolls-Royce. It was made from 1946 to 1958 as only a chassis at the company's Crewe factory, its former Merlin engine plant, alongside the shorter Bentley Mark VI. The Bentley was also available as a chassis for coachbuilders, but for the first time could be bought with a Rolls-Royce built Standard Steel body. The use of the name "wraith" coincided with the established tradition of naming models after "ghosts".
The Bentley 6½ Litre and the high-performance Bentley Speed Six were rolling chassis produced by Bentley from 1926 to 1930. The Speed Six, introduced in 1928, became the most successful racing Bentley. Two Bentley Speed Sixes became known as the Blue Train Bentleys after their owner Woolf Barnato raced the Blue Train in 1930.
The Knight engine is an internal combustion engine, designed by American Charles Yale Knight (1868-1940), that uses sleeve valves instead of the more common poppet valve construction.
The Rover 8 was a small single-cylinder 8 hp 1327 cc car made by the British Rover car company. It was Rover's first production car. It was remarkable for being supported by a backbone chassis rather than a conventional ladder frame. The first model was manufactured from 1904 to 1912. A Daimler-Knight sleeve valve engine option was available on the original model in 1911 and 1912.
The Humber Pullman is a four-door limousine which was introduced by the British Humber company in 1930 as a successor to the Humber 20/65 hp and long-wheelbase version of the Humber Snipe.
Laurence Henry Pomeroy (1883–1941) was an English automotive engineer trained as a locomotive engineer and particularly interested in the introduction of light alloys into automotive applications.
The Vauxhall 27, 30 and 35 h.p. is a large six cylinder car manufactured by Vauxhall from 1910 to 1914. The 27 h.p. was Vauxhall's first six-cylinder car.
The Triumph Six Cylinder or Triumph I6 engine is a cast-iron overhead valve straight-six engine produced by Standard Triumph. It is an evolution of the Standard Motor Company's inline-4 Standard Eight, with the addition of two cylinders and a larger displacement.
The Standard wet liner inline-four engine was an inline four cylinder petrol engine produced by the Standard Motor Company. Originally developed concurrently for passenger car use and for the Ferguson TE20 tractor, it was widely used for Standard passenger cars of the 1950s, most notably the Vanguard. Later it was successfully used in Standard's popular early generation Triumph TR series sports cars.
The Rover 16/50 and Rover 16 are mid-sized cars which were produced by Rover from 1926 to 1929 and non-continuously from 1936 to 1947 respectively.
The Daimler New Fifteen was a large saloon/sedan car at the low end of the Daimler's range produced between 1937 and 1940. It had a tax rating of 16.2 hp. In September 1938 it was given a larger engine with the tax rating of 17.9 hp though it retained the name Fifteen. When production resumed in 1946 it was given a revised cylinder head, given chrome channel frames for the side windows, stripped of its running-boards, and renamed Daimler Eighteen.
The Daimler Fifteen was a saloon car at the low end of Daimler Company’s range, offered between 1932 and 1937. It was the first Daimler product for more than two decades with an engine that breathed conventionally through poppet valves. Conventional valve gear had improved, superseding the former advantages of the Daimler-Knight sleeve-valve technology. The car's name derived from its tax rating of 15 hp. The design of its 6-cylinder 1.8-litre engine was developed from the 4-cylinder 1.2-litre Lanchester Ten which was installed in Lanchester's shorter versions of the same chassis and bodies and using the same Daimler semi-automatic transmissions.
The Daimler Double-Six sleeve-valve V12 was a piston engine manufactured by The Daimler Company Limited of Coventry, England between 1926 and 1938. It was offered in four different sizes for their flagship cars.
The Lanchester Ten and Lanchester Eleven were sold by The Lanchester Motor Company Limited from the Ten's announcement in September 1932 until 1951. Quite different from previous Lanchesters, the Ten was the second of Lanchester's new owner's new Daimler-linked Lanchester range. The names Ten and Eleven referred to the engine's rating for the annual tax and did not relate to the engine's power output.
Daimler DE was a series of chassis made by the Daimler Company from 1946 until 1953. DE chassis were the basis for Daimler's largest and most expensive cars at the time. There were two versions: the short-wheelbase DE 27 with the Daimler Twenty-seven straight-six engine, and the long-wheelbase DE 36, the last Daimler Straight-Eight, with the Thirty-six straight-eight engine. Daimler DEs, especially the DE 36 Straight-Eight, was sold to royalty and heads of state around the world, including British royalty under the royal warrant that Daimler had held since 1900.
