Front drive not so long ago received widespread in the automotive industry, but mainly in compact sizes. The front-wheel drive cars have a number of advantages, including a more compact engine compartment, no cardan and simpler control for a regular driver.
Now everyone is accustomed to the fact that most of the car available on the market - front-wheel drive. But when such models just started appearing, they were a bit strange. To understand what we mean, take a look at this GMC L \ 'Universelle 1955 curlers.
Its name is translated from French as "universal." GMC L \ 'Universelle was a radical concept van with wide transformation capabilities that could adapt to a wide range of tasks performed.
For the design answered Harley Earl, who created the very first Chevrolet Corvette, and Charles Jordan, who later led the Cadillac Designer Bureau in those days when he was staggered on fins. Together they came up with this van with doors of the "wing of the seagull", the body of which accommodate almost 5 cubic meters of cargo. It was more than vans based on Ford F-100 pickups.
Such results were achieved by setting up the power unit and transmission around the front axis L. 4.7-liter Pontiac V8 under the GMC 288 brand was used as the engine.
It gave L \ 'Universelle Excellent weight distribution 54:46, but also put a number of engineering tasks for which GM chose several interesting solutions. Due to the lack of space for the radiator in front, the engineers installed it at the driver's seat at an angle.
The air intake is located on the roof, where the fan sucks hot air through the roof hole. The presence of a cabin ahead of the front axle also complicated the steering craving, in which several cardans were used.
The complexity of the layout of the concept broke into the fact that GMC did not fully worked the technical side of the project. The vagon did not have the ignition system, and the gearbox did not work. And the load capacity turned out to be catastrophically small - only about 450 kg.
For reasons, now obvious, L \ 'Universelle has not received development. His drawbacks turned the advantages of the front drive. However, Earl and Jordan were likely to find out that their ideas later found their embodiment in serial vans, such as Volkswagen Transporter.
Subscribe to Telegram Channel Carakoom