In today’s CC For Sale, let’s take a look at the 1951 Crosley Hot Shot, a twelve-foot-long, twenty-six horsepower pocket rocket–and an important piece of American motoring history.
The history of Crosley has been well documented on CC in this excellent article, but here’s a quick recap: Powel Crosley Jr., a well-known radio and refrigerator manufacturer, had the idea during the Depression to build a lightweight, inexpensive, and reliable car. By 1939, the car was ready, with hundreds of Crosley appliance dealers signed up to sell it.
The onset of WWII–and fuel rationing–made the tiny vehicle a hot-ticket item, with used models going at a premium after Crosley had turned to manufacturing wartime munitions.
In 1946, Crosley returned to civilian auto production with a new engine named COBRA (for COpper-BRAzed). It was quite a unique powerplant, making 26hp from a stamped-steel block and head that weighed only 14.8 pounds. On paper, it seemed a perfect fit, being as cheap and efficient as the car it was powering. However, customers started returning COBRA engines by the truckload, as the tin block would quickly develop pinholes in the cylinder walls. Crosley sales tumbled by 1948, and it was clear quick action was necessary.
The next year, Crosley debuted its CIBA (Cast Iron Block Assembly) engine. It proved to be much more reliable than the COBRA, and quickly replaced it across Crosley’s whole line.
1949 also marked the debut of the Hot Shot, just in time for the Fifties sports car boom. Returning GIs had gotten their first taste of Euro-style performance while abroad, and while only 2,000 MGs were imported into the US between 1946 and 1949, they opened the floodgates. Dozens of individuals and small enterprises started building them here in the States, typically using standard American chassis and mechanicals paired with open, swoopy fiberglass bodies. (You can read more about those cottage manufacturers here.) The Hot Shot, though, was most likely the first mass-produced model, with 753 built the first year. Furthermore, being a Crosley, it was dirt cheap at $849 (about $8800 adjusted)–half the cost of an MG.
The 26 HP provided by the overhead-cam CIBA engine doesn’t seem like much today, but it could propel the 1,200-pound Hot Shot to a 0-60 time of around 20 seconds and a top speed of 77 MPH. The contemporary MG was only about a half-second faster to sixty.
Early models had four-wheel disc brakes, certainly a rarity on an American car in the late forties. Unfortunately, they tended to freeze up in salty areas, so by 1951 the Hot Shot featured Bendix drum brakes at all corners. While maybe not as advanced from an engineering perspective as the discs, they were still more than enough to handle anything a driver could throw at them.
Crosley even managed to get a victory at the inaugural Sebring race in 1950, winning the Index of Performance in a Super Sport, a higher-end version of the Hot Shot. Clearly, this wasn’t a pretender–the Hot Shot was a legitimate sports car with a respectable level of performance.
Low price, good performance–what’s not to like? Sadly, after the COBRA engine debacle, Crosley was a deeply damaged brand, and buyers were staying away. Powel Crosley would sell the company to General Tire in 1952, who immediately wound down auto production. Only 2,498 roadsters (both Hot Shot and Super Sport) were produced in that four-year span.
Our featured car is literally a barn find. “38,000 plus miles. Floor pans good, side curtains included. Engine condition unknown. Spares package includes an extra block, head with valves, pan, 2 cranks, 2 water pumps, 2 fuel pumps, NOS crank bearings and piston tings [sic], flywheel and pressure plate. other misc. Will consider a trade for a French or Italian car”.
It’s definitely a 1951 from looking at the serial number, and it looks like it’s been a pretty long 66 years since. For example, the grille’s not missing- that’s a Body by Sawzall modification. And the headlights and turn signals look like they were moved outboard at some point.
Hot Shot, pre-rhinoplasty
The interior looks to be in somewhat OK shape, but then again Crosleys were never known for their luxurious appointments. Quite simply, there’s not much to break or go missing over the years.
The Hot Shot did not come with doors from the factory, unlike the more expensive Super Sport. Judging from the bathroom-style door latch keeping this one closed, I’m guessing this was an “aftermarket” addition.
Hot Shots, rare as they are at auction, have sold from between around $7k to $20k, while this less-than-pristine edition is going for $2,800. I’d imagine parts would be hard to find, although the Crosley Automobile Club website does list quite a few vendors.
I wonder if an EcoBoost would fit in this thing?
A Detailed CC history of the Crosley by Ed Stembridge is here
I can’t imagine driving one of these in today’s traffic, for any number of reasons. To answer the question in the title this is not America’s first sports car; the Stutz Bearcat and the Mercer Raceabout would be considered “sports cars” by any definition.
Hi Joe,
I agree completely- I have driven modern go-karts that are safer and have more amenities.
As to the first sports car claim, I meant in a postwar sense, as in one informed by European sensibilities. I should update the post title to reflect that.
Edit: joe, I can’t edit the title so just take what I said with a grain of salt 🙂
Cars like the Stutz and Mercer weren’t called “sports cars” in their time; we call them that retroactively. The term “sports car” comes from Great Britain, and was imported here along with their sports cars right after the war. Therefore, the title is rather correct, but obviously subject to eternal debate.
A neighbor bought a “standard” convertible, and shortly after a hot shot for the local race scene, both were red. He wanted a Studebaker convert, but none were available. The standard had a roundal sort of like the later 50-51 Studes on the nose, it had wide whitewalls from a western auto can, and full hubcaps from a trailer of some kind. From the wrecking yard came chrome rocker panels and other trim bits. The hot shot had headlights and bumpers removed for racing, as well as windshield. It suffered numerous “shunts” and by the late fifties he repaired the body to smoothness and spray canned it quite nicely with new red. He also had several MG’s. A 47 MG TC engine and trans went into the standard convertible around 1955, and a 54 TD engine into the Hot Shot in 59, with the trans. I saw these from my earliest memories and thought they were incredibly cute. He finally found his dream Studebaker convertible, a 51 with V8 in 1961 and in 1962 finished it’s restoration (he also had bought a stripper 52 Ford Ranch Wagon in tan, new for his practical car then. In 1962, at 14 years old I bought both Crosleys for $25. (already had go karts and dirt bike). I didn’t have a license, but our property was large enough and relatives ranches, cousins and I set up tracks and raced each other When I got my license and first “real” car at 15 (rural area at the time) my car, a 57 Plymouth Belvedere convertible in new condition, I lost interest in the Crosleys, and they were used on the ranch for years. Later my 58 and 61 Bugeye Sprites reminded me of the Hot Shot.
I have always found the Hot Shot cool, if only for that rare combination of oddness and sort-of-capability as a road car. I recall one in the basement of the Lane Museum.
I read about them long before I had ever seen one. It looks like someone was trying to turn this one into something like a bigger Sprite.
I’ve seen lots of pictures of Crosleys, and even made a digital model of a Crosley…
https://www.sharecg.com/v/87132/gallery/11/Poser/1952-Crosley-wagon-and-panel
but I didn’t fully grasp how TINY they are until I looked at the license plate in the 5th picture. More license than car!
The Healey grille opening is awful, but the doors are nice carpentry work. They look like they belong on the car.
The Healy grille butchery might play into a attractive custom grille if this car falls into the right hands. No one could fault a current owner for vintage butchery, especially if they get this tiny tea pot back on the road.
Very nice model. I’ve done a few 3D cars myself in Blender.
Shows you just how desperate Americans were for cars at the end of WW2.
It shows more how desperate Crosley was; his cars weren’t selling, despite the post war sellers market, and he tried to branch out in numerous ways to keep volume up. None of it worked, of course.
A former neighbor had one, vintage-raced occasionally, truly tiny. I last saw it in the late ’90’s, only on his trailer.
I haven’t seen a Nixon-Agnew bumper sticker since the ’68 election!
Judging by this bumper sticker and the plates I’d say this car was stashed away sometime in late 1968. Given the worn condition and some of the “mods” done to it, I have to wonder if some industrious owner had managed to keep it on the road for the 17 years prior?
Looks like a perfect project for Jay Leno!
If this isn’t the definition of adorable, I don’t know what is. Not sure about the Ecoboost transplant, though; how about the Mustang 5.0 instead? Seems completely practical.
Amazing that this DID survive, given the sheet metal “surgery”. And that they became throwaway cars when it wasn’t worth repairing them.
But first sports car? No. I’m with just plain joe that either the Mercer Raceabout or Stutz Bearcat deserve that honor.
Frank Lloyd Wright bought six of these for the use of his apprentices, keeping one for himself. Photos show Mrs Wright behind the wheel; by 1952 Mr Wright was no longer driving.
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM1904
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/pedro-e-guerrero-frank-lloyd-wright-and-mrs-wright-in-their-crosley
Once again, mismatched wheel openings confound the designer. I like the prewar body; glad to see one of those here.
Thanks for sharing the links Stephen!
With a little imagination, the Crosley could be crossed up drifting the corner in photo two.
A civil engineer I used to work with told me he’d gone to that first Sebring race in a friend’s Hot Shot, and some guy asked if he could pay to borrow it for the race. The deal was made, the car was entered, ran the whole race, and to almost everyone’s astonishment won that Index thing! My confidant and his friend got basically a free weekend out of it, but I gather it was the driver who kept the trophy.
There were two Crosleys in regular use around our little Illinois town when I was growing up, both station wagons. A good friend had one – he drove out onto the frozen field we were launching model rockets from because the battery we were using for the igniters had lost its juice from the cold, so we used Jim’s. Unfortunately the car broke through the frozen crust into the mud below, and digging it out resulted in a large crater. The owner of the field, who had not been consulted at any point, informed our friend’s dad that he’d been expecting a good crop of winter wheat … we refilled the hole and someone paid the farmer.
The other little wagon was used as a daily driver by another farmer, a fellow well over 6′ tall and of impressive girth. What he had done was remove the front seats and have the steering column extended, and he drove it into and around town sitting in the back seat.
Will, when researching for this article I found the same story about the winning Crosley. Nice to see it corroborated.
I remembered the basic story but not the details. Yes, I’m pleased like you that someone remembered and shared it. Neat story. Neat little car.
I owned a ’52 Super Sport for about a year, but I never got it on to the road. It was rusty but restorable, and loud, as the exhaust pipe was bitten off ahead of the muffler. At 25, I was still living with my folks, and when I started seeing a girl nearby work, about 40 miles away, I sold it, my ’40 Plymouth and two old Packards to move closer. That life change was part of growing up, but I miss the cars. The Crosley had all the possibility of being a super fun car, but I never warmed to the crash gearbox; it seemed antithetical to the idea of a sports car in 1975.
Barry, very nice- I see you also added some doors.
Actually, those were factory. Crosley added doors to the Super Sport version of the Hot Shot. I think a previous owner had refinished them and left them in red oxide primer..
As for the girl, we dated for about 3 years. Not too bad. She lasted 3 times as long as the car.
The bad part was actually that I bought the car from an enthusiast who made a point of telling me that he was happy that I bought it rather than a rival who he felt would have trashed the car. When I sold it during my youthful life change, I was in “car dumping mode”, so I ignored the previous owner’s complaint and accepted an offer from the hated competitor. I still feel bad about that.
Wow, Barry. You’ve had some interesting (and small) cars in your life. You’ll have to do a COAL series one of these years! 🙂
That’s an idea, Paul. The only downer is that I have had a wandering eye. I don’t keep them long, always looking for the “car of a lifetime” that never seems to materialize. On the other hand, it makes for a lot of cars to write about. A “Micro CC” series would be fun to do…
I have thought of doing COAL’s but I have owned about 55 cars in the ten years I’ve been driving. They are mostly cars I wanted to own and got fickle with but using the term “lifetime” sounds generous as less than 5 of these cars stayed with me more than a year.
The Crosley engine lived on long after the demise of the car in a succession of outboards beginning with Homelite.
http://members.aol.com:80/homelite55/index.html?mtbrand=AOL_US
Thanks for reminding me about the Homelite being a further development of the Crosley engine. I remember being quite surprised when it came out. It was ahead of its time.
That’s interesting, a few months back I was at a museum that had a collection of outboards; I can’t remember whether there were any Homelites among them though.
So the big question Barry. You lost the hot shot….did you keep the girl??
Pretty cool if very crude .
I imagine this price is very good as it looks complete and little rust .
-Nate
Sticks in my mind that the COBRA engine had been designed for use in drones, so the lack of long term durability, which was fatal in a car, was not a problem in the engine’s intended use.
As for Crosleys in general, there’s a car that even a King Midget can look up to.
I’ve read something almost similar; that the COBRA end worked very well in its original application, but my understanding was this original application wasn’t in drones, but rather as a stationary engine in things such as water pumps and generators.
My understanding is that problems arose once the engine had to run at constantly varying speeds in an automobile, versus running for hours at a constant speed. Also, I’d imagine the motivation for keeping things meticulously maintained was higher for military personnel than it was for many drivers; otherwise, you’d end up with water where you don’t want it, no electricity, or a reprimand.
… but rather as a stationary engine in things such as water pumps and generators.
That’s what the Wiki entry says. That entry also says longevity was measured in hours.
Other sources say that part of the problem in auto use was running low on coolant as overheating would warp the engine causing leaks. Another source of trouble was that antifreeze of the time contained salt, which speeded corrosion of the sheet steel block.
The early production Mooney Mite also used the COBRA engine, and also experienced a great deal of trouble with them. Mooney recalled the COBRA engined planes and retrofitted them with Lycomings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooney_M-18_Mite
From Ed Stembridge’s excellent CC on the Crosley:
The engine that emerged from Crosley’s wartime production for the Navy would be the secret weapon that the company hoped would turn a niche product into a mass market sensation. The so called COBRA engine that had been developed as a lightweight military spec motor during WW2 by Lloyd Taylor of Taylor Engines would forthwith be the engine installed in Crosley’s entire line of cars. On paper, the engine held great promise. The bare unitary block/head weighed just 14.8 lbs; complete with flywheel, the total installed weight was 133 lbs (60 kg). The little 724 cc overhead cam four produced 26 horsepower- double the air cooled twins output of just a few years before. And because the block and head were made from sheet steel, the COBRA cost a lot less money to build.
The little four had powered refrigeration units and portable generators during the war, and its 44 inch displacement could return the same outstanding fuel mileage of the old air cooled twin and was quieter to boot. It seemed for a moment that the company had unlocked the secret to making money with a specialty product that sold in low volumes. But company engineers (and Powel Crosley’s brother Lewis) had warned the founder that the COBRA had some design flaws that would come back to haunt them all if not addressed, and as we will see, the warnings were not heeded. The resulting damage that the engine did to the cars reputation would go a long way toward wrecking the company’s finances and forcing Crosley out of the automobile industry.
Full article here: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/america%E2%80%99s-home-grown-kei-car-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-crosley-automobile/
Okay, this most emphatically reminds me of another lightweight engine, also SOHC, also designed to meet government specs for use in portable fire-pumps. That of course was the Coventry Climax FP. Its only real drawback was that one requirement was that it should be able to run at service revs from dead cold. Given the motor-oil technology of the early Fifties, this required bore tolerances loose in the extreme, which resulted in both heavy oil consumption and a rebuild schedule (in the later racing applications) of about 500 service hours.
Lloyd Taylor’s name popping up reminds me that he (I assume it was he) was apparently involved in a project to build an American lightweight racing engine, to be called the Tice-Taylor (I also assume the other fellow’s name was Tice). There was an article in one of the many sports car mags I have not been able to replace, but it would have been in the early Sixties. That was I think a DOHC four a good bit larger than the COBRA but of similar construction in sheet steel with oven-brazed copper joinings.
I wouldn’t think that excessive oil consumption or the 500 hour service life would be issues in racing applications, where engines are typically inspected and serviced on a frequent basis. Speculation on my part but I would think that any racer would be ecstatic to get 500 hours out of any racing engine. Heck, that would be enough to run the 24 hours of Le Mans 20 times 🙂
For racing cars it wasn’t. Things got a bit more problematical with the FWE version for the Lotus Elite. Lotus drivers who wanted a lovely little GT with great handling etcetera could put up with a lot in the early ’60s, but paying for a rebuild every other year or so was not for everyone. I was all starry-eyed about Elites and was beside myself when a garage next to my work place offered one for $2500. It was a mechanic’s lien: the owner had gotten a rebuild and couldn’t pay. The mechanic told me this situation would reappear regularly, so Mr. $3.25/hr slunk sadly away.
It slipped my mind that some people used these in road cars. For that application paying for a rebuild every other year or so could be an issue. Owning and operating any Lotus vehicle has to be a labor of love; an Air Force buddy of mine had an early seventies Europa circa 1977. At this point I don’t remember much about it other than it had a Renault engine and, per him, required 10 hours of maintenance for each hour it spent on the road.
When I lived in L.A. in the 1990s and early 2000s I remember seeing one of these being driven regularly in the suburb of Monrovia. It looked like a cute and fun little car to drive.
I think that part of the Crosley’s problem was the styling, particularly the small wheels. If the wheels were larger it would have looked more like a Triumph TR2 and probably have sold better.
Crosley never moved beyond the Lilliputian car, which the general public discounted as a legitimate alternative to the generally accepted full-sized Detroit product.
In addition to the Crosley appliance stores selling the car, small repair garages took the franchises too. Not the ideal situation as few were versed in affective selling techniques. At least, it addressed one of the major problems i.e. service and mechanical repair which appliance store weren’t equipped to perform.
Crosley never moved beyond the Lilliputian car, which the general public discounted as a legitimate alternative to the generally accepted full-sized Detroit product.
Really small cars have never done well in the US. In the teens there were a flurry of cyclecar manufacturers started, but a Model T cost only slightly more and was a much more functional proposition.
Austin tried to build cars here just as the depression started. The effort went bankrupt in a few years. The company was reorganized as American Bantam, but sold few cars, though I suspect the start of gas rationing made the few who bought the Bantam version of the Austin 7 feel like geniuses. The Gilmore has a Bantam and you have to stand next to it to really appreciate how dinky it is.
Laurel and Hardy demonstrated just how small they were to great effect in their short film “Our Wife”.
I have pictures I could post, if I just took the trouble, of a whole batch of Bantams at one of the Amazing Little Cars shows somewhere around Covina abt eight or ten years ago – two sedans and a perfectly-done miniature Semi rig. I also have a set from last year’s San Marino Motor Classic. Watch this space.
Although the first Bantams were basically Austin Sevens with left-hand drive, Alexis de Sakhnoffsky was hired to design a proper streamlined kinda Art Deco body, which he did very nicely. The fragile Austin gearbox was eventually replaced with one from Studebaker, and down the road a third main bearing was added to alleviate that nasty crankshaft whip…
It’s easy to crack wise about cockamamie car engineering, but we ought to remember that the basic layout of the very first Jeep was a prototype from American Bantam, which got screwed out of the deal because Willys and Ford had the production capacity they lacked.
As for Crosley … their chutzpah is a whole lot more admirable than their cars. Too bad about that engine, but a very lively cottage industry persisted in Italy for some years of shops building ridiculous-hp versions of those engines. This was decades before Honda got 70+ hp out of THEIR 750cc four-cylinder.
Hi Will ;
I was there and well remember the tiny little semi and trailer rig .
I hope you share some ‘photos , I always enjoy the Unique Little Car Show .
-Nate
That’s actually an American Austin Bantam .
A tiny little thing it is .
-Nate
What is? The featured car is most definitely a Crosley Hot Shot.
The one in the Laurel & Hardy film he mentioned .
-Nate