Two hot rods with a Marmon V16 engine

And in this article you can see two cars at once, which are charged with a 16-cylinder Marmon engine. Howard Carpenter Marmon, the founder of the company, was in many ways a pioneer, using advanced technical solutions at that time whenever possible. It was his car, the world’s first monopost Marmon Wasp, that won the first-ever Indianapolis 500 race in 1911, and it was on that car that a rear-view mirror was first installed. Marmon also participated in the technology race, trying to be the first to develop the V16 engine, but the stock market crash of the 29th year prevented him from coming first, and Cadillac introduced its car with a sixteen-cylinder V-shaped engine earlier. Thanks in large part to engineer Owen Nacker, who decided to trade Marmon for Cadillac in 1926, just after Howard Marmon began developing his V16.

Business in general does not particularly like innovators and creative people in general, and if the mighty GM was behind Cadillac, then no one was behind Comrade Marmon, and the Great Depression forced him to forget about the production of passenger cars in general and luxury cars in particular. The Marmon Sixteen was only produced for three years. All the more surprising is the fact that I was able to easily find as many as two hot rods powered by a Marmon engine, and both – which is generally amazing – are built in our time. While my favorite Cadillac engine was discovered with great difficulty in only one car that was able to reach us from the fifties of the last century. The only objective reason for this phenomenon, from my point of view, is the fact that the Marmon engine is larger in volume: 8 liters of Howard Carpenter versus the 7.4-liter Series 452 model.

I think it’s time to meet the heroes of the article. The first of these is a ’34 Ford, built by Jack Bowser under the impression of a hot rod with a linear eight from Duesenberg. Yes, yes, it’s the same famous Ulrich brothers hot rod that Jay Leno rode in, and which I already mentioned once, and which I still don’t consider necessary to write about because I don’t like linear engines. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, Jack tried to buy the same car with a Duesenberg engine, but got turned away from the gate, and therefore decided to build his own car with a rare engine and sixteen cylinders. The result of five years of work was this stylish handsome man named J.B. Forman Special. The Ford’s body and frame have been carefully modified and lengthened to accommodate and hold the long and heavy V16. Yes, there are only ten pipes, because the six central cylinders on each side have only three exhaust channels. The hood for this engineering marvel was handmade, as was the interior. Bowser’s special pride is the Bulova Accutron watch, built into the steering wheel of the hot rod. I’m not much of a watch expert, but it seems like the Accutron model is quite iconic in a certain environment because of some special mechanism…

Let’s get back to the car. The Forman Special generally has a whole range of pleasant details, of which the V-shaped Duval glass, Marmon’s hubcaps on the Dayton spokes and the original Marmon Sixteen nameplate above the dashboard stand out. The engine was completely rebuilt, and its fuel injection system was changed to a single-point TBI. Between the wheels and the engine is a six-speed transmission modified with Quartermaster spare parts, as far as I understand, from a Dodge Viper. Nowadays, no one makes ignition systems for the V16, and therefore the engine is driven as if there are two eight-cylinder rulers under the hood: there are two ignition systems in the trunk, one on each side of the engine. The resulting unit produces 410 horsepower and the projected maximum speed should be so insane that I probably won’t believe this number: 413 kilometers per hour. As the creator of the hot rod himself says: “Unfortunately, we built it so beautiful that this is not the car that I will drive on the roads.” That’s why Jack Bowser never accelerated the Forman Special faster than forty. Nevertheless, the car is completely legal for roads and the auction lot mentions the presence of a removable roof and stainless steel muffler covers. In the video, Jack also mentioned that he was working on wings so that the wheels wouldn’t throw rocks or scratch the paint, but it’s not known if these plans have been finalized.

I found a second hot rod with a Howard Marmon V16 engine just today. I was going to write an article about Bowser’s car, typed a few words into the search engine, and they gave me a completely different hot rod. I must say, I was surprised. But as a result, I couldn’t dig up enough information about him for a really good separate article, and therefore decided that he would be a good companion for his fellow engine. So, the second hot rod was built in the Hot Rod Garage workshop. This car, apparently, was created from scratch, and it is mentioned that those cats worked according to Marmon’s original drawings, trying to preserve as many original design elements as possible. At least at the Barret-Jackson auction, the car passed as a 1931 Marmon.

The car has a removable roof, a mother-in-law’s seat and, again, a Marmon Sixteen nameplate above the dashboard. Under the hood is definitely the same V16 with a volume of 8 liters. A classic three-speed manual transmission was also listed at the auction. And if the previous hot rod had a computer installed that had a monitor in the cabin and served, among other things, as a rear-view mirror, then no electronics are observed in this car. And I could see the rearview mirror in one of the photos with the roof installed, so it’s quite possible that this hot rod is also legal for roads.

Unfortunately, that’s all we know about the second car. The video I found is completely silent. But it has some very nice angles. As an auto mechanic, I especially liked the sign showing how the cylinders work in the engine.

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