As the years march on, we put more and more distance between ourselves and the roots of the automotive hobby we all enjoy. Hot rodding played an especially important role in establishing the dominance of the automobile in America. While some icons have risen to become household names, many others have been all but forgotten by those not deeply engrossed in the hobby.
Carl Fleischmann is one of the pioneers of post-war hot rodding, and the Jalopy Journal dug up the history of one of his most memorable innovations; the Dual-Charged roadster.
Fleischmann built this hot rod on a ‘29 Ford body, borrowing bits and pieces from most of the pre-war Ford catalog. But the real centerpiece of the car, as documented in a 1953 issue of Hot Rod magazine, was the dual-charged Mercury V8 engine. Using two centrifugal-type superchargers, the roadster was able to obtain incredible performance. It also handled and stopped better than any modern car from the factory, thanks to custom work by Fleischmann.
In fact, the engine produced too much power. The dual Stromberg carburetors could not suck in enough air at high RPM’s, resulting in some rather nasty detonation issues that ate spark plugs and spat out bits of metal and ceramic. Fleischmann had been rethinking a fuel-injected setup to avoid the detonation, but we don’t know what became of the dual-charged roadster after this article.
Just goes to show you though, pretty much everything has been done already when it comes to hot rods.
