I have to thank BangShift tipster Tony Hoffer for the lead on this amazing video of what is probably the craziest automotive engine ever actually running. This is an Adams-Farwell rotating cylinder engine. Produced for about 10 years starting in the early 1900s, the engines were powerful, efficient, and actually pretty brilliant. The company was gonzo by 1913 and there is only one functioning Adams-Farwell car left on Earth. Thankfully that car is in good care and this video is proof of that. Displacing 490ci and made up of five cylinders, we’re pretty sure this thing was rated at either 50 or 75hp. The performance of Adams-Farwell cars was as good or superior than anything else on the market back in those days. Like today though, it was a tough sell to take an idea as wild as this one and make a go of it.
As you will see in the video below, the crank is solid mounted to the frame and the engine spins around it. It seems like the whole thing would be impossible but when you see it working, the engine is almost beyond words in tis cool factor. The Adams-Farwell slogan to describe the engine was, “It spins like a top!” The man in the video does a far better job explaining the car than we ever could and we’re going to let him do it.
Along with all of the other stuff happening in the early 1900s, the range of options for people (who had the money) in the automotive world was completely insane. From engines that spun around their cranks to cars with toilets installed in them, the sky was the limit during this time in motoring life. Yes, these were basically hay wagons with engines in them but we’re sure glad that this single car survived all these years and can still fire up and show us all how wild those days really were.
Built in my home town of Dubuque Iowa! there were actually some aircraft that used the same rotary principle. Those guys were brilliant engineers.
Swap an LS in it!!!!!
Some of the earliest aircraft engines worked like this too.