Could The REO Gold Comet V8 Have Been A Record-Beating Land Speed Racing Engine? Rod & Custom Magazine Thought So

Could a gas V8 designed for heavy-truck usage and weighing more than half a ton have been the ideal engine for a Bonneville streamliner in the 1950s? Rod & Custom Magazine thought so, and they explained why in their October 1955 issue.

If the racy red roadster that you could build yourself for less than the cost of a new Ford didn’t prompt a young hot rodder to pass a quarter across the newsstand, perhaps the headline would have: “REO V8: New Competition Engine?” That should have been enough to pique the interest of anyone with a mechanical mindset.

That’s because the Gold Comet was not intended for automotive usage at all; it was, however, advertised as “the crowning achievement of 50 years,” a celebration of 50 years of REO engineering. REO Motor Car Company was begun by Ransom E. Olds after he left his namesake company over a disagreement with the company’s directors about the direction the company was taking. REO began building trucks in 1908, and that’s what they eventually became best known for doing. Introduced a few years after the Gold Comet 6, the V8 displaced a burly 440 cubic inches, and it had a good, long run for an engine designed in the 1950s, with production lasting until 1975. Here it is in all its finery as it would be installed in a big REO truck.

There’s little evidence that anyone took the Gold Comet seriously as a performance engine except Bob Behme at Rod & Custom Magazine. He talked to engineer Ted Mengles from Mameco Engineering, who thought that the Gold Comet was “THE only American engine with the potential to take the International Class B records away from Auto Union.” (The Auto Union streamliners are a story of their own.) Behme’s article is hypothetical, two men talking about an engine’s possibilities, and it becomes clear that hopping up a REO would not be a cheap proposition. But it was a good starting point for a variety of reasons, including its standard 220 horsepower and 405 lb.-ft. of torque at 3000 and 2000 RPM respectively (these numbers would later rise to 235 horsepower and 412 lb.-ft.). Behme compares the Gold Comet to the Buick 322, which had larger valves (really?) but less torque. What he doesn’t mention is that the Buick was also a smaller engine in every way.

REO did brag that the Gold Comet was “shorter than any other heavy-duty truck engine—only 39 1/2″ long from front of fan to rear of flywheel housing.” It was also lighter at 1,211 pounds, meaning that Mr. Behme’s figures were a little light in Rod & Custom (he quoted 1,110). Just as the magazine discussed ways to chop some weight off of the big REO, the company itself was bragging about its power-to-weight ratio of 5.51 pounds per horsepower, which compared positively to other truck engines whose figures were as poor as 14:1. For the sake of a performance engine, that figure could be improved by simply removing the huge air compressor from the front of the engine, as no streamliner would have to worry about air brakes.

One thing that would have had to be dealt with was that flywheel housing and its unique mounting brackets. Being that the 1950s was the heyday of the home hot rodder and his willingness to cut-and-try, hacking off the cast-iron housing and replacing it with something more adaptable to an automotive manual transmission would have been feasible. I can’t even imagine the time you’d spend working out the measurements, and drilling and tapping mounting holes, etc. Behme suggested that the then-plentiful Cad/LaSalle three-speed would have stood up to the REO’s torque, and in a land-speed situation, nobody was speed-shifting, so it really only had to channel the power through top gear.

 

The article mentions that a Gold Comet on a test stand in the Los Angeles area was capable of 6,000 RPM and more, but the small valve size would have been an impedance. Behme continues:

The stock valves are sodium cooled. The valves, by way of explanation, are hollow and filled with sodium—a metal which melts at a very low temperature. During operation, heat from the engine tends to melt the sodium which “sloshes” around inside the valve thus aiding in keeping it cool. With a large-valve Comet, though, this heavy-duty feature of cooled valves would probably not be necessary.

One way to cut down the engine’s weight would have been to replace the heavy cast-iron intake manifold with an aluminum unit. The only problem would be that nobody built aluminum performance manifolds for a REO V8, so one would have had to be fabricated; not to mention, land-speed mavens would have likely strapped a Roots blower on top, negating any weight savings anyway. Notice the Holley “Teapot” 4000 four-barrel carburetor mounted on this Gold Comet; it was a similar carburetor to that which Ford used on its 312 T-Birds in the mid-1950s.

REO did brag about its manifold’s design, a water-cooled dual-plane unit that minimized “fluctuations and variations in the flow of [the] fuel mixture.” The carburetor even had an automatic choke, a neat feature for a 1950s big rig.

Here, Behme and Mengles lay out their plan for Class B speed record domination, and why the REO would be a good foundation on which to start.

• The valves are well-cooled, with “water squirted at the valve head area through tiny jets in the jacket.”
• The cylinder walls are “wet-sleeved,” which “allows [REO] engineers to build the walls out of extremely high quality materials.”
• A high-performance camshaft would have to be ground.
• The crankshaft and main bearings would be strong enough for higher RPM duties.
• The 7.3:1 compression ratio would have to be raised and new pistons made.
• The valves and ports would have to be enlarged, as previously mentioned.

 

Behme continues:

• Use “hot” fuel. As the 1950s elapsed, this would have certainly included nitromethane, although it depends on the class you’re entering.
• “Add a supercharger with about 15 lbs. boost.” (That’s a lot.)
• “Modify the engine to peak near 5,000 [RPM].”

Another (unnamed) engineer also suggested that a REO Gold Comet tucked into something like the “City of Burbank” streamliner would be a “dream” combination to go after International records.

Since I’ve never heard of a Gold Comet-powered land-speed racer, there must have been insurmountable problems (or at least problems that weren’t worth the effort) in using it as a high-performance platform. Was it the breathing? Porting and polishing were and are common hot-rodding tricks, but would larger ports have “hit water”? The same generous cooling passages that kept the REO alive might have limited its potential for modification, and without having a cutaway of the head in front of me, it is tough to speculate.

Nevertheless, more proof of the REO’s toughness is explained above: It had “replaceable inserts in both intake and exhaust valve seats” and “bronze valves guides…throughout.” Theoretically, that meant that in combination with the Gold Comet’s wet sleeves, the engine was almost infinitely rebuildable as long as parts were available.

It was a neat theory of Mr. Behme’s, and it comes from a world that has sadly passed away. The 1950s and 1960s were full of innovative hot rodders who were looking anywhere to gain the slightest advantage in classes, and they were unafraid to stuff almost any engine under almost any hood (or streamliner). Engineers saw the tough Gold Comet V8 and saw nothing but a V8 engine with overhead valves, a distributor in the back, and plenty of potential. Of course, the Chrysler Hemi and the Chevy small-block became THE hot rodders’ choice for decades, but there were still people out combing the rule books, wondering what would fit in what. Land speed racing was and is the home to some of the greatest, and weirdest, ideas. Regardless, spending more money to make less power than a Chrysler Hemi, especially considering that it grew to 392 cubic inches within a year or so, probably didn’t appeal to many.

And while Gold Comets now sit quietly forgotten in the shadows of museums, or under a few hoods at big truck shows, they’re a fine example of American ingenuity and what might have been.

Related Reading

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Curbside Classic: 1952 REO F-22 – I Can Dig It (by Paul N)