Chevy stovebolt 6, Ford flathead v/8, or Plymouth 6 flathead. How do they compare?

[central52]

How would you rate the 3 primary car engines of the 1930s to early 1950? The Chevy 6 with overhead valves, the Ford flathead V/8, and our venerable Plymouth 6 flathead. Reliability, performance, durability. Over the long haul, which do you think is the best engine? Curious, Ed P.

[Don Coatney]

To get an unbiased answer you would need to ask this question to a group who has been isloated from the rest of the world for the past 75 or so years. To ask this question on this forum you will only get one answer. For the record the Mopar Flathead 6 cylinder engine was still used in some new vehicles until the late 60"s, early 70's.

[greg g]

Chevies had splash oiling for the crankcase, and babbit bearings. The ford was prone to overheat and had the fue lpump mounted on top of the engine higher than the fuel tank, which lead to hot start difficulties. Plymouths had full pressure oiling and more hp than the flathead v8.

Fords still had closed drivetrains and buggy springs till 49.

Plymouth published various charts during the 40's and 50's comparing their cars and the other two price leaders on features, Plymouth always seemed to have more advanced features, but Chrysler was kow for their engineering prowess.

[desoto1939]

Greg: Inyou last post on this topic it sounds as if you were satting that Plymouth was the part of the company that was leading the way for the Mopar cars.

But in reality it was the combination of the entire Chrysler Motor Division and Chrysler Engineering that was leading the group. The entire line up of Chrysler included, inthe order of price was Chrysler, DeSoto, Dodge then Plymouth and you also later had the Chryler Imperial in there at some point in time.

The Chrysler engineering was far better in the early years. Just look at the beginning in which Chrysler had juice brakes from the start. As also stated the Big 6 of the Chrysler/Desoto engines had more HP thenthe Ford V8. The Big six was putting out 92 hp vs 85HP and when you added on the Aluminum head you went upto 100HP.

These flat head 6 engines were and are still being used in some heavy equipment such as in tree chippers. Chrylser was always know for their engineering but had a bad name for quality control on alot of their cars and this is what hurt them.

The sad part about all of this is that now that FIAT has taken over the company you are going to see alot of the american engineering being pushed aside for foreign engineering. There has been talk that a great deal of the existing Chrylser cars are going to be replaced with Fiat models.

To get back to the subject at hand, also look at the war effort from Chrysler and in the engines that were put into the Sherman Tanks and eventhe Willys Jeeps and then the Dodge Trucks that were used inthe war.

Rich Hartung

[T120]

Has anyone come across sales figures for Chrysler,Ford and GM in the mid thirties? Particularly interested in Dodge,Plymouth,Ford and Chev

[Young Ed]

For quite a long time it was chevy ford plymouth in number of sales. Ford passed chevy in 57 and 59.

[greg g]

I was specifically referencing the comparison to the other 2 of the low priced three.

The trickle down engineering benifited Plymouth against the Ford and Chevy.

I believe that for the most part Plymouth was solidly entrenched in third palce in sales for the years refereced.

[claybill]

WWll......all chrysler products used. do you need another reference!!!!!

there were very few others in usa, i saw a packard once for a colonel!

some things are always #1 others are always #2 and so on. no matter what?

bill,

burger king, macdonalds, wendys, sonic, culvers.....try to rate them for sales and then quality..cant.

[claybill]

remember how we used to terst a car by how fast it would go in 2nd gear!!!

i never could figure out the reasoning,..but did it!

i have a friend who insists that his '48 high school ride (ply-p15) did 90 in 2nd....(dont talk o/d.)

i cant get 90 in 3rd!!!

my chev impala,348 would do 90 in second...back in 1962'

bill

[moose]

I don't have any knowledge if back-in-the-day, but I did win a couple of races against a Ford flathead. It was against a Model A tudor back in 2003. I pulled away from him pretty easily. Later he said he was "going easy on the old girl" Didn't seem like it to me.

I raced mine hard all weekend then drove it 350 miles back from upstate NY, and still got 19mpg for the whole trip.

But I might be biased;)

[T120]

I was curious about sales figures because Plymouth appeared to have been the better automobile in the lower price range,but as Claybill mentioned the quality of the product doesn't necessarily result in higher sales volume

[B-Watson]

I was curious about sales figures because Plymouth appeared to have been the better automobile in the lower price range,but as Claybill mentioned the quality of the product doesn't necessarily result in higher sales volume

I have registration figures for U.S.A. from 1923 and Canada from 1932, plus model year and calendar year figures for U.S.A. back to beginning for most makes. Canadian figures go back to 1904 for Ford, 1908 for GM, 1911 for Studebaker, 1924 for Chrysler, 1931 for Hupp, 1932 for Hudson and 1950 for Nash - all of them the first years of production.

In the case of Chevrolet, Ford and Plymouth, Plymouth came up from the bottom in 1928 to being within reach of Ford by 1940. But after WW II no styling changes for three years and then introducing cars that looked good when parked next to a 1947 Kaiser, followed by no automatic transmission, cost Plymouth. Chrysler had a good engineering image, but in 1949 even that was wearing thin.

The stodgy styling and the lack of an automatic would cost Plymouth its #3 spot in 1954.

For the 1928-41 U.S. registrations :

1928 : 1-C-769,927; 2-F-482,010; 3-WO-231,360; 4-HE-225,834; 5-B-196,287; 6-Po-183,994; 7-Ch-160,670; 8-N-115,172; 9-S-107,234; 10-Ol-73,713; 11-Du-71,368; 12-GP-58,523; 13-Hu-55,550; 14-Pa-42,961; 15-Oa-37,100; 16-P-29,490

1929 : 1-F-1,310,147; 2-C-780,014; 3-HE-254,029; 4-WO-199,709; 5-Po-158,273; 6-B-156,817; 7-D-124,557; 8-N-105,146; 9-Ol-89,425; 10-P-84,969

1930 : 1-F-1,055,097; 2-C-618,884; 3-B-110,325; 4-HE-93,804; 5-Po-68,389; 6-P-64,301

1931 : C-583,429; F-528,581; P-94,289

1932 : C-332,860; F-258,927; P-111,926

1933 : C-534,916; F-311,113; P-249,667

1934 : C-534,906; F-530,528; P-302,557

1935 : F-816,519; C-656,698; P-382,985

1936 : C-768,040; F-748,554; P-499,580

1937 : C-768,040; F-765,933; P-462,268

1938 : C-464,337; F-363,688; P-286,241

1939 : C-598,341; F-481,496; P-348,807

1940 : C-853,529; F-542,755; P-440,093

1941 : C-880,346; F-601,013; P-452,187

The makes -

B - Buick

C - Chevrolet

Ch - Chrysler

D - Dodge

Du - Durant

F - Ford

GP - Graham-Paige

HE - Hudson & Essex

Hu - Hupmobile

N - Nash

Oa - Oakland

Ol - Oldsmobile

P - Plymouth

Pa - Packard

Po - Pontiac

S - Studebaker

WO - Willys-Overland

I have not included Dodge Brothers for 1928 as the calendar year production and registration figures are too low given the known production before and after Chrysler's purchase of Dodge Brothers.

The amazing part is the rise from the beginning in 1928 through to 1931 - from 16th to 3rd. The first Plymouth had 4 springs for suspension and 4-wheel hydraulic brakes. By 1935 Plymouth had a 6-cylinder engine with removable bearings, full length cylinder cooling and pressure oil lubrication. Neither Chevrolet nor Ford could match Plymouth point for point.

The downfall -

1950 : C-1,420,399; F-1,166,118; P-547,367; B-535,807

1953 : C-1,342,480; F-1,116,267; P-600,447; B-454,320; Ol-305,593

1954 : C-1,417,453; F-1,400,440; B-513,497; Ol-407,150; P-381,077

1953 was a good year for Plymouth yet its sales were barely over 50% of Ford. Prior to WW II you had to go back to 1932 for a similar situation.

The big winners for 1954 had new bodies (Buick, Oldsmobile) or new engines (Ford, Buick Special). Chevrolet dumped their old Stovebolt Six while Plymouth soldiered on with its flathead six. And it was not until March, 1954, that a Plymouth buyer could get a real automatic transmission, 3 years after Ford and 4 years after Chevrolet.

Bill

Vancouver, BC

[Jim Saraceno]

I have some 1935 sales brochures scanned and posted on a blog site. Of course they are put out by Plymouth so they are biased, but it compares the Plymouth to some other makes of the time.

[T120]

Hi Bill,Thankyou for posting the registration figures and info,I appreciate it.

- and,Jim,Thanks for posting the comparisons - good reading. Ralph

[greg g]

here is some general info on p15 manufacturing numbers.

More than one million P15s were manufactured between October 22, 1945, and January 28, 1949, when the last car was built. Shipments of P15s in stock continued through March, the January shipment of 35,586 Special Deluxe cars (along with 5,676 Deluxes) setting the sixth highest single month's shipment in the P15's history.

[Manuel in Oz]

There used to be a magazine that did back to back road tests of old cars. It was called Special Interest Autos [sIA].

If I remember rightly they did some testing of the big 3 cars for all different years.

U can probably find the index of the back issues on the net somewhere.

HTH

Manuel in Oz

[Jim Saraceno]

There used to be a magazine that did back to back road tests of old cars. It was called Special Interest Autos [sIA].

SIA is the predecessor of Classic Car published by Hemmings. Issue #153 had an article comparing the '59 Plymouth to Ford and Chevy.

It is also in their publication "Hemmings book of Plymouths" which is a great collection of their Plymouth articles over the years.

[TodFitch]

Take a look at the table near the bottom of this page:

http://www.allpar.com/squads/police-cars/police1.html

It gives some performance comparisons between 1933 Plymouth, Ford and Chevrolet.

[central52]

Those 1933 performance figures for the Ford, Chevy, and Plymouth were very interesting, and the other comparisons with brakes and suspension.

It looks like the Plymouth 6 is really the engine to have. Strong, reliable, and a good performer. I'm happy I have my 47 coupe. Ed P.

[Jim Yergin]

I have a 1982 article from Special Interest Auto that is a comparison test drive of a restored 1941 Plymouth coupe, a restored Ford coupe and an original unrestored Chevrolet coupe. The PDF copy I made is too large to post here. I would be happy to email a copy to anyone who wants it. Just PM me and provide an email address.

Jim Yergin