1931 Hispano-Suiza J12 (type 68)
Is this the best car in New Zealand? The first J12 Hispano Suiza built, displayed at the Paris and London motor shows before being delivered to its owner, the Shah of Persia, now lives in New Zealand and is a regular sight on North and South Island roads
Idling up to the traffic lights in top gear, the big Hisso drops down to 10 mph and yet still the driver makes no move for the chrome plated lever by his right leg. It might only have three speeds but right now only one is required. The lights go green and as the throttle is opened, we gather speed instantly. Cars around us are staying level with us, some pulling ahead then losing ground as they change gears.
With 9245 cc of V12 lurking under the cream and blue bonnet, we have no need for revs or gears, 220 hp and seemingly unlimited torque means we accelerate like a turbine and in almost complete silence. At the 100 km/h speed limit the Hispano is nowhere near getting into its stride and is attracting plenty of attention from the Friday afternoon commuters looking forward to getting home.
Then we come to the hill. Cars around us start to slow but as the head of the stork mascot, once worn proudly on the side of French WW1 fighter ace Charles Guynemer’s Hispano-Suiza powered Spad XIII points onward and upward, not only are we holding 100 km/h as we start to climb as we need to overtake slower tin boxes, but as soon as the throttle opens, the big tourer leaps forward. The only way the occupants know of the increase of speed is the movement of the white needle on the OS speedo and a little more breeze coming into the front of the car as we have the top of the hood furled in the 3/4 position and front windows down, in effect making the driver’s compartment (only ever intended for the hired help while the master rode in the rear) totally open. This is truly what the term “Grand Routier” was invented for.
Spying a suitable photo location at the last minute, the massive mechanical servo-assisted brakes (which Rolls-Royce also used under licence to Hispano-Suiza) slow us down every bit as impressively as we had just been accelerating and we pull off the road. At walking pace, second gear is selected and we swing into the driveway. Even at this slow speed the driver doesn’t seem to need to haul hard on the wheel to make the tight turn despite the massive size of the carriage he is conducting. As the chauffeur he is still feeling fresh, unflustered and ready to tend to any of the master’s instructions.
Yet things were not always so happy with this car. It had a problem from new in that it overheated. And Persia (now known as Iran) is not the best place for a car with a suspect cooling system to live.
Within a year of arriving at the Shah’s palace, the bonnet had grown extra louvres in the top, and the sides were replaced by new ones featuring doors, mimicking Chevrolet or Cadillac from 1932 in an effort to get hot air out from the sealed engine bay as efficiently as possible. Yet none of this made any difference at all and the car saw very little use.
This is the first J12 or type 68 Hispano Suiza built and it seems that the works may have saved their best efforts (or at least the results of some extra development) for later examples.
The Shah did very little mileage in the car and only 12 months ago the mileage was 20,000km. Originality goes as far as the very delicate stork mascot, which has the chassis number stamped on it. Each of the four owners of the car has maintained detailed files of exactly what work has been done, invaluable when it comes to making repairs or checking the history of any component.
In the early 1960s the Shah finally sold the car to (of all people when considering the politics of the region) an Israeli dealer who passed it on to a collector in the USA. Making landfall on the east coast of the USA in 1963, the car was driven 1500 miles to its new home in Tulsa. Apart from the overheating issue, it behaved perfectly.
Fast-forward to the 1980s and in New Zealand the late Roy Southward had obtained a J12 engine and he was seeking a Hispano-Suiza H6 chassis (the six cylinder predecessor to the J12) to build a car around. Contact was made with a Hispano contact in the USA who had a better idea. Instead of trying to concoct a car which would always be a “bitza”, if Roy wanted a J12, why didn’t he buy the whole one in his garage instead?
A deal was done and the car soon arrived in Wellington. With less than 20,000 km on the clock, it was in excellent condition and even though now fully restored, a process started by Roy Southward and completed by the current owner, the car is amazingly original, right down to the leather on the front seat.
Its public debut was at the VCC Pan Pacific rally in Palmerston North in 1992 where it was discovered that despite no longer having to cope with the desert heat of Persia, it still ran hot, did not seem to perform as it should and seemed to lose power the further it was driven. At idle it would run slower until eventually stalling, then would refuse to restart, the carbs would flood and the radiator boil. Clearly there was something amiss and the car was entrusted to Bristol Motors in Upper Hutt where Dave Wilkens and Neale Ryder were told to fix it, no matter how long it took.
It took some time. The cooling system was checked, the radiator seemed fine and the twin water pumps (one for each bank of 6 cylinders) were both operating as they should. The problem was not there. The next possibility was a build-up of silt around the cylinder. The decision was reached that a full strip-down of the engine was going to be the only way to look deeper into the issue. The engine consisted of a pair of alloy blocks with integral heads, bolted to an alloy crankcase, pistons working within 100mm nitralloy liners screwed into the blocks. In the interests of silence, instead of engineer Marc Birgkit’s normal aviation practice of overhead cams with associated drive gears or chains, the J12 used pushrods and roller tappets for valve operation, with the exhaust valve stems filled with sodium to aid cooling.
With the blocks removed it was immediately obvious that despite the low mileage, things were not at all well inside. The pistons were scored badly and a look inside the bores revealed severe scuffing. Clear evidence of the pistons seizing, but was this as a result of or the cause of the overheating? But what would have caused such serious markings on both surfaces? It did not take long to discover the reason. It turns out the problem was an engineering issue from the factory itself. The bore was 100mm and so was the piston! So as soon as the pistons got warm and started to expand, they were binding in the bores. Basically, the engine was trying to seize but the large capacity meant that it kept running (just) and of course, once it had been switched off and allowed to cool for while, the pistons contacted and it would re-start, all 220 hp on tap, albeit briefly.
As the liners are nitrided they can’t be bored in the usual manner so they needed to come out. In typical HispanoSuiza style they are screwed into the bottom of the blocks. It sounds simple but... there are no holes or castellations in the bottom of the sleeves to get any sort of tool to grip on. A plug was made to slip inside the cylinders and a clamp to go around the outside. With a ¾ drive socket and bars of increasing length, including a behemoth from the local bus depot, there was still no sign of movement. More head scratching took place before a novel method was tried. With the alloy blocks being heated with a massive gas heater, liquid nitrogen was dropped down the bores. In theory with the blocks expanding and the sleeves contracting the grip would break and service agent. That wasn’t an option so the allow the unscrewing to begin. In best bet would be to bore the liners, add practice, nothing changed. a new set of pistons and problem solved!
The socket drive was dispensed with As boring wasn’t an option, the sleeves and a bracket bolted to the clamp which were instead ground true while Denco in would take (very) long lengths of bar. It Christchurch were entrusted with making took a 20 foot long piece of pipe, Dave patterns and casting new pistons of the on one end and Neale on the other correct size this time, but the opportunity before the liners would then unscrew, was taken also to increase the compression effortlessly.ratio.As an experiment on the next cylinder, the bar was reduced to With everything in bits, the blocks were a mere ten feet. No chance of anything dip-stripped to remove any corrosion. As unscrewing then, so back to 20 feet and Neale Ryder describes it, “By using alloy it worked. Finally! With everything out, blocks with steel sleeves, brass and copper it was now possible to fix things. inserts and then running the HT leads
Under normal circumstances it through the water jackets, the Hispano wouldn’t be a big job to fix it; in the engineers couldn’t have made a better job day, new blocks from the local Hispano of electrolysis if they had tried.”
When finally the time came to refit the reconditioned blocks to the stripped and reconditioned crank case, this too was a mission. The sump actually includes the main bearing caps as part of its structure so the conrods have to be in place on the crankshaft before the pistons are reintroduced to the bores. Six ring compressors had to be made for the job and the crankshaft rotated to make sure the pistons were in the right position as the block was carefully lowered over the crank case. Don’t forget that this delicate process which would involve more than just a couple of pairs of hands, and doubtless some very rude words as well, had to be repeated for both banks of the V12. No chances were taken with the cooling system so while the engine was dismantled, the radiator was re-cored and the water pumps serviced as well.
With everything back together it was time to start the motor. Success, it fired up immediately and ran well, but the good news was the temperature sat exactly where it should. The bad news was the carbs were still flooding and the on-road performance was still not what was expected. Much fiddling with float levels, jets and fuel pressure not only sorted the flooding but also brought the fuel consumption up to the quite reasonable figures of 12 mpg at 100 km/h and 11 mpg at 120 km/h. The twin Scintilla magnetos which provide the spark to the 24 plugs (one on the inlet and one on the exhaust side of each cylinder) had also been overhauled but it was discovered that they had slightly differing advance characteristics. Fortunately the owner at the time, Roy Southward, was able to source a matching pair and with these overhauled and fitted, for the first time in its life, the Hispano actually delivered its full quota of power and was transformed into the effortless high-speed cruiser which it should always have been. Then...
On its maiden outing, going better than it ever had before, disaster struck when it dropped a valve seat! The block had to come off again and it was discovered that this early engine (the first one made) had seats with tapered sides. This must have been a known weak point in the motor as later ones have conventional parallel sides. There was no realistic option other to remove the other block as well and replace all 24. Quite a tricky operation this with this having to be done with arms inserted into the cylinders from the bottom. Non- detachable heads are very fortunately now very much a thing of the longdistant past!
With this done, the Hispano now performs faultlessly and reliably, just requiring routine maintenance, as would be expected from an 80+ year old car. This car was the subject of a test by The Autocar in October 1931 which commented on the power, torque, great roadholding, outstanding braking and light, precise steering. They recorded a maximum speed of just over 100 mph and a 0-60 mph time of 12 seconds, outstanding figures for the day. Intended to be Hispano-Suiza’s equivalent to Bugatti’s Royale and costing as much as 75% more than a Rolls Royce Phantom III, the type 68 was intended to be the absolute epitome of the Grand Tourer.
Remaining in production from 1931-38, 120 examples were built. Of the survivors, the majority are hidden away in private collections or museums. It is quite possible that this car, which has covered 10,000 km in the last year (one third of its total mileage since 1931) is the only one which is actually driven and will continue to be so, as the last few details of the on-going restoration are attended to. Long may this continue!