Jalopnik: crosley

Fighting Fascism With a Sheet-Metal Block: Crosley COBRA

Murilee Martin — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:00:00 EDT

What has 44 cubic inches, weighs just 133 pounds (including all accessories and flywheel), a block made of copper-brazed sheet steel, and joined with the Willys Go Devil to help plant a big steel-toed boot in the asses of Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo? The Crosley COBRA! Yes, UDMan, your suggestion has been heeded (in spite of the fact that I had a childhood of anti-Crosley propaganda from my grandfather, who bought one new in '46 and considered it the dumbest decision of his entire life). To be fair, however, an engine designed for stationary, fixed-RPM operation as a military generator powerplant can't be expected to hold up well under the temperature fluctuations and stop-start demands of a motor vehicle. By '49, Crosley had switched to a cast-iron block, which was more reliable but nowhere near as cool. [Crosley Auto Club]

Crosley-Davidson Has A Harley V-Twin

Mark Arnold — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:30:00 EDT

A 1951 Crosley wagon is cool in that quirky oddity sort of way. But you'll probably want more grunt than the original 26 HP motor. Well you could try to shoehorn in a small block V8, but that would just take away some of the offbeat Crosley charm. So why not use a Harley V-twin? With 110 HP, it's hardly a slouch in the little 1600-lb. wagon. Now the Crosley can cruise Woodward and hang out at Sturgis. Check out the whole build process here.

[MIRG]

Project Car Hell: DAF or Crosley?

Murilee Martin — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 17:30:38 EDT

Congratulations to the winnah of yesterday's Project Car Hell poll: the Thousand Buck 928! The Porsche won by a fairly comfortable margin, no doubt due to its irresistible mix of inherent Stuttgart coolness and certain death-of-a-thousand-cuts agony for anyone attempting to take it on. For today, we've gone a bit older and raised the ante by a grand or so...

We've seen a lot of DAF-related conflict on this site, but who among us has been brilliantly unhinged enough to go ahead and purchase a real one? Well, by golly, here's your chance! For the nerve-rippingly reasonable price of just $2000, this '62 DAF Daffodil could be providing you with years of wrench-twisting fun (not to mention international negotiations with parts sellers on eBay Netherlands). The seller says it's all there but "needs some repair," which is probably something of an understatement. There's some rust on the rockers panels, too. On the plus side, it has under 25K on the clock, the engine isn't frozen, and it has a really great daffodil emblem on the steering wheel (and we really don't need to mention the awesomely loony DAF transmission with its Super Reverse Potential). Just to get you in the correct frame of mind for contemplating the essential DAFness of it all, ingest a hyper-Dutch dose of the Shocking Blue before you proceed:

You may well be on board with the orphaned Dutch car but feel that the erstwhile colonial masters of the Dutch East Indies have tainted the car with too much cruelly spilled Javanese blood. And that's fine with us, because we've got a good ol' American car that could be even more hellish a project than the DAF: this 1953 Crosley station wagon. "More hellish?" you sputter, "Why, Crosley parts are readily available!" Maybe so, maybe so... but this particular Crosley looks like it's going to need many parts, plus rust repair, plus everything you can imagine. It runs, though, and you get a '48 parts car plus a bunch of mystery Crosley parts to boot, all for just $250 more than you'd pay for the Daffodil. Imagine the light at the end of that very long, very dark tunnel- your own Crosley wagon, no doubt sporting some sort of far-too-powerful engine implant.