Classic stories
...transverse engines started with J Walter Christie’s odd racecars
From 1903 to ‘08, an American engineer by the name of J Walter Christie built seven racing cars with transverse engines. All of them used his patented front-wheeldrive system that combined a transversely mounted engine with a novel clutch and gearbox layout, so that the crankshaft could be parallel to the drive shafts.
For the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup – the first major US auto race – he built his first V4-engined car and spent the best part of a year improving it until it was as fast as any other American racing car of the time … at least for a lap or two. It still wasn’t reliable.
The following year, this car was updated and, with the V4 engine displacing a massive 20,0 litres, he entered the 1907 French Grand Prix. This was the largest power unit ever entered for a GP and Christie drove the car himself, although he retired after four laps with engine failure.
The last Christie racer was built in 1909. It was essentially a lighter and lower version of the GP car and used the engine block as a stress-bearing member of the chassis. The V4 engine was inclined rearwards to redistribute the mass and lower the car. It was immediately successful, with Christie beating the famous Barney Oldfield at Grosse Point in August 1909, but the success came too late for the former. By now he was involved in another project and sold the car to Oldfield, who then raced it successfully for four years. The car proceeded to gain much notoriety and fame for exhibiting extreme understeer, with the front wheels spinning and sliding sideways in a spectacular and entertaining manner.
With a world war becoming an inevitability, Christie turned his attention to gun carriages and tanks, and was involved in protracted negotiations with the US army without much success. He did manage to sell some of his designs to Britain and Russia, but the endeavor unfortunately resulted in very little money.
Transverse engines would, of course, gain large-scale acceptance with Sir Alec Issigonis’ Mini in 1959 and, while it’s generally believed that the Mini was the first successful transverse-engined front-wheel-drive car, that’s not true. The German DKW “Front” F1 roadster was the first car produced in quantity with such a layout. It had a 600 cm3 twocylinder, two-stroke transverse engine driving the front wheels and was built from 1931 to ‘40.
Thousands were exported to SA and there are still a few left in the hands of collectors. After WW2, rebodied versions of these cars were mass-produced in East Germany under Trabant and the first Saabs were essentially copies of the DKW, at least as far as the power unit and driveline were concerned.