Continental Motors
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Image:ContinentalMotorsLogo.png
Continental Motors is a corporation in Mobile, Alabama, USA, that produces aircraft engines. They are currently part of the Teledyne conglomorate, and properly known as Teledyne Continental.
The company also supplied automobile engines to independent automobile producers from the 1920s through the 1960s, produced in their factory in Muskegon, Michigan. Continental Motors also produced Continental branded automobiles in 1932/1933 based upon the 1931 De Vaux, a product of the De Vaux Motors Corporations of Oakland, California, which had been using body dies left over from the former Durant, which been produced by Durant Motors until 1930.
Company history
1905 Continental Motors is born with the introduction of a four-cylinder, four stroke cycle L-head engine operated by a single camshaft.
1906 Type "O" 45 hp (34 kW) engine is developed to power aircraft.
1929 A-70 radial, seven-cylinder engine is introduced.
1930 A-40 four-cylinder engine is introduced.
1938 A-50 is added to the lineup to power the Piper Cub and Taylorcraft.
1939 Continental builds aircraft engines for use in British and American tanks.
1945 Six-cylinder E-185 developed for Beechcraft Bonanza.
1950s A-65 developed into the more powerful C-90 and eventually to the 100 hp (75 kW) O-200. The latter powered one of the most important airplanes ever: the Cessna 150.
1960s Turbocharging and fuel injection are brought to general aviation. IO-520's applications expand to dominate the market.
1984 TSIO-520-BE for the Piper Malibu. It sets new efficiency targets for piston engines.
1986 Powered by a liquid cooled version of the IO-240, the Voyager is the first piston-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the world without refueling.
1997 NASA selects Continental to develop and produce GAP, a new 200-hp engine that operates on Jet-A fuel.
1999 Continental develops and tests its first FADEC-equipped engine.
Source; excerpt and wikified from official site.
Continental Motors continues to build engines for aircraft and is currently (2005) a division of Teledyne Technologies Company.
Automobiles Using Continental Engines
- Checker Cab (pre-1965)
- Durant Motors (including Durant, Flint and Star brand cars)
- Jeep (during World War II)
- Kaiser-Frazer Corporation (including Allstate, Frazer, Henry J, Kaiser and post-1953 Willys brand cars)
- Keller
- Velie
External link
- Teledyne Continental Motors TCM official site
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