Miller
Harry Miller obviously did a very good job (1915) bringing the shattered Oldfield DELAGE-engine back into life (exchanging a broken tubular connecting rod). One year later on september 3 1916 Oldfield had let it be known through the Los Angeles newspapers that he had given up trying to win races with his Delage engine. Along with building what would be called The Golden Submarine, he would replace his Type S's engine with a new one made by Miller. This was the beginning of the Miller's single cam fours, some if not all of which incorporated Miller's own interpretation of desmodromics, which he doubtless considered to be an improvement over the Delage variety. Oldfield drove the Miller-engined Delage in only two more important races.........
This Delage car with Miller desmo-engine was turned over in 1917 to different pilots, one of which was Le Cain who won a ten mile handicap at Sheepshead. The pic of the car with nr. 16 might be the one but it is still uncertain. We also do not know yet how the H. Miller desmo design actually looked like! we need to find the answer digging up a surviving SOHC desmo Miller four.
Source: All above text literally or paraphrasingly according to Griffith Borgeson in "The 1914 GP Delage" in AQ; Vol. XXIV, number 3. Engine Specification:
4 Cylinder aluminum alloy, 289 cid, 3-5/8 bore x 7" stroke, 136 H.P. @ 2950 R.P.M.,
Single overhead cam, desmodromic valves, dual intake ports for each cylinder, dual sparkplugs and magnetos.
Source: http://www.vintagecars.com/sub.htm The Sub ran the 1918 race season minus the enclosing bodywork, enjoying minor success but few wins. At the age of 35, Oldfield had cheated death at the top of his sport long enough and chose to hang up his driving gloves, sell the Sub and invest his time and money in the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company. Like most race cars out of their prime, the Golden Submarine became a hand-me-down property, eventually being destroyed by fire while stored in a barn in Joliet, Ill., in the early '30s. In the late '70s, vintage racing enthusiast R.J. "Buck" Boudeman of Hickory Corners, Mich., located an original Miller engine identical to that of the Sub and spent the next several years creating an exact duplicate of the chassis and unusual body. It is this version of the famous car that will be displayed at the Food Lion AutoFair - alongside one of those modern Indy Racing League racers with jet-like bodywork that owes part of its aerodynamically successful design to the vision of Harry Miller. Source: http://www.charlottemotorspeedway.com/autofair/goldsub.html
pictures of the perspex-model
[Classification = Group 7 B]
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