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The Ford flathead V8 (often called simply the Ford flathead, flathead Ford, or flatty when the context is implicit, such as in hot-rodding) is a V8 engine of the flathead type designed by the Ford Motor Company and built by Ford and various licensees. During the engine's first decade of production, when overhead-valve engines were rare, it was usually known simply as the Ford V‑8, and the first car model in which it was installed, the Model 18, was (and still is) often called simply the "Ford V‑8", after its new engine. Although the V8 configuration was not new when the Ford V8 was introduced in 1932, the latter was a market first in the respect that it made an 8-cylinder affordable and a V engine affordable to the emerging mass market consumer for the first time. It was the first independently designed and built V8 engine produced by Ford for mass production, and it ranks as one of the company's most important developments.〔.〕 A fascination with ever-more-powerful engines was perhaps the most salient aspect of the American car and truck market for a half century, from 1923 until 1973. The Ford flathead V8 was perfectly in tune with the cultural moment of its introduction, leading the way into a future of which the Ford company was a principal architect. Thus it became a phenomenal success. The engine design, with various changes but no major ones,〔.〕 was installed in Ford passenger cars and trucks until 1953, making the engine's 21-year production run for the U.S. consumer market longer than the 19-year run of the Ford Model T engine〔 for that market. The engine was on Ward's list of the 10 best engines of the 20th century. It was a staple of hot rodders in the 1950s, and it remains famous in the classic car hobbies even today, despite the huge variety of other popular V8s that followed. ==Development and production overview== Before this engine's introduction, almost all mass-produced cars affordable to the "average mass-market consumer" (which was a concept that Ford helped invent) used straight-4 and straight-6 engines. Since French engineer Léon Levavasseur's invention of the V8 engine in 1902, multi-cylinder V-engines (V8s, V12s and even V16s) were produced, but they were used in luxury models and their production runs were thus limited (relative to downmarket production volumes).〔.〕 For example, the first Cadillac V8 engine was in that category. Even though Ford had an engineering team assigned to develop the engine, many of the ideas and innovations were Henry Ford's. The Model A, its variants (B and 18), and this V8 engine were developed between 1926 and 1932, and this period was the elder Ford's last central contribution to the company's engineering.〔 He remained an innovator until his death, but his later ideas were not immediately central to the company's business. This design had the camshaft above the crankshaft, as in the later pushrod operated overhead-valve engine. Valves for each bank were mounted inside the triangular area formed by the "Vee" of cylinders. The intake manifold fed both banks from inside the Vee but the exhaust had to pass between the cylinders to reach the outboard exhaust manifolds. Such an arrangement transferred exhaust heat to the block, imposing a large cooling load; it required far more coolant and radiator capacity than equivalent overhead-valve V8 engines. Ford flathead V8s were notorious for cracking blocks if their barely adequate cooling systems were overtaxed (such as in trucking or racing). The simple design left much room for improvement, and the power available after even low cost modifications was usually substantially more than could be obtained from an overhead-valve inline six-cylinder engine of similar displacement. The Ford flathead V8 was licensed to other producers. It was used by Simca in France until 1961 and in Brazil until 1964 for cars and until 1990 in the Simca Unic Marmon Bocquet military truck. In the United States, the flathead V8 was replaced by the more modern overhead-valve Ford Y-block engine in 1954. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ford flathead V8 engine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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