45-plus members gathered at the Bird in Hand on Thursday 19 September for a short talk and slide show presented by Phil Waltham and his team on the 1899 Panhard - the oldest usable car in Norfolk, which is resident at the Gressenhall Museum in Norfolk.
This car was built to a design of 1898 utilising a four-cylinder Daimler ‘Phoenix’ engine, originally designed for use in a boat. The car’s second owner was the Hon. Charles Royce, who purchased the car for £1250, an incredible amount of money back then, in today’s money equivalent to approximately £152,367.
With slides etc. to illustrate his talk, Phil Waltham ran through the history of the car. This included how a new front cross member was fabricated from ash and that it had an engine overhaul at the same time. The engine is interesting in that it has automatic inlet valves; the suction of the piston going down the bores creates a partial vacuum opening the valve. The exhaust valve is opened and closed by a conventional camshaft, follower and rocker arm. This limits the top speed of the engine to approximately 800 rpm, which in turn limits the top speed to approximately 25 mph.
In speed trials in 1900 the car achieved a speed of some 29.6 mph!
The Panhard had to have a new radiator made from scratch as the original cooling system ended with water being stored under the rear seat in a large tank. To use it on the road today, it has had to have a front mounted radiator pumped using a water pump friction driven off of the flywheel.
Chief Engineer, Andrew, and drivers David and Clare accompanied Phil. All were happy to talk to members about the car.
Brian Glover