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15 After Bricklin Canada Ltd. and General Vehicle Inc. went bankrupt Malcolm decided to venture in a new direction with this new 12 cylinder rotary engine. Bricklin Motors, Malcolm's only remanding car company, was the only company the would back Frank Turner's rotary engine. By 1977, the engine was being installed in a Chrysler Cordoba for real life testing.
A newspaper article from the late 70's
presented this venture thusly...
Malcolm decided to venture in a new direction with this new 12 cylinder rotary
engine. Mechanics Illustrated says the 12-cylinder engine has
"incredible" specifications and "a lot of attractive
qualities as an automotive power plant". "The wide rpm range
and high torque simplify transmission problems, and potential weight savings
... fit right in with the need to design smaller, more fuel efficient cars for
the 1980's" says the author of the article.
The engine weighs about half of a conventional V8, but puts out about 500 horsepower. The engine's low number of parts, all of which are simple to make, interests both car builders and service engineers. Their average current V8 has 1,029 parts compared with the 124 for the Bricklin-Turner.
The rotary engine was one of the power plants which Bricklin was considering for the cars produced by his company in New Brunswick at the time it went bankrupt, on Sept. 25, 1976. However, the engine had not yet become part of the company , so it didn't go down with the rest.
The company produced 2,892 vehicles. The acrylic bodies were built in Minto, and the cars were assembled in Saint John. Conventional engines were imported from manufacturers in the United States. At its peak, Bricklin Canada employed about 600 New Brunswickers.
The Bricklin-Turner rotary engine is different from other engines of its kind like the Wankel or the gas turbine in that it has pistons. The engine's pistons are located in opposite halves of the engine housing, six on each side, coming together in a vee, and the blocks in which they fit revolve. Through this design, the reciprocating piston action which causes most of the stress and vibration in a conventional engine is eliminated so that the motor can run up to 7000 rpm without flying apart.
The motor was built in a small machine shop in Graham, Tex. by Frank Turner, the owner of the shop. He built the first prototype using only a drill press, lathe, band saw, and milling machine.
Once the motor was finished in 1972 he was unable to find the backing among the big car makers in Detroit, but Malcolm Bricklin became convinced of its value, and hired Mr. Turner as a consultant.
When Bricklin Canada Ltd. and its American parent company General Vehicle Inc. folded, Mr. Bricklin salvaged the relationship with Turner, found more money, and formed a new company, Bricklin Motors Inc. to market the engine.
Mr. Bricklin and Robert Witlow, the president of Bricklin Motors, saw the Bricklin-Turner rotary engine as the engine of the future. They also saw a great potential market for other applications ranging from lawn mowers to airplanes.
At the time, 1977, the engine was being installed in the Chrysler Cordoba for real life testing.
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