When I noticed this diminutive red sports car being towed behind a pickup, I first grabbed my camera to take pictures… and then realized I had no idea what I had just seen. Initially, I had assumed it was an obscure British sports car. Only when I got home and studied the pictures did I realize that I’d seen my first-ever Crosley Super Sports. The fact that I assumed it was British is fitting, since this was the first American car to follow MG into the sports car market.
North America’s love affair with sports cars began when many WWII servicemen returning from the UK brought home MG-TCs. Very quickly, MGs became the quintessential sports car, and the British captured most of the ensuing sports car market for the next two decades. This was a market niche that didn’t interest most US manufacturers; Cincinnati-based Crosley Motors was a fascinating exception.
Powel Crosley made a fortune for himself by selling radios (Crosley was once America’s largest radio producer) and also home appliances, such as refrigerators. Cincinnatians knew him as the owner of the Reds baseball franchise… who played at Crosley Field. But while radios and appliances built Mr. Crosley’s empire, automobiles held a special attraction for him
Crosley entered the automobile business in 1939, with small and affordable offerings such as the wagon above. Following a hiatus for WWII, Crosley, along with other US manufacturers, resumed production in 1946. Crosley’s specialty in small cars wasn’t exactly a mainstay of US consumer interest at the time, but given heavy postwar demand, Crosley’s cars sold well for a few years. But by 1949, Crosley thought he needed a more alluring product to generate interest in his model lineup. And he figured the burgeoning interest in sports cars was a good place to start. This resulted in the Hotshot (debuting for 1949), and then two years later the slightly updated Super Sports.
These sports cars presented an interesting combination of innovation and obsolescence. The car had some enticing engineering features. For example, its 44-cu. in., 4-cyl. engine produced 26.5 hp at a remarkable 5,400 rpm, giving it the highest specific power output of any contemporary American-made engine. Stopping the 1,100-lb. Hotshot were disc brakes – a revolutionary feature for the time. And the grille-less front end was years ahead of its time.
However, this was no futurama-mobile. That grille-less front was juxtaposed by a completely flat windshield. While the high-revving engine was technologically advanced, power was put to the ground via a three-speed, no-synchromesh transmission and front and rear solid axles with leaf springs. And the original Hotshot had no doors.
It appears that our featured car is a 1951 or ’52 Super Sports model, which featured luxuries such as doors (the main upgrade from the standard Hotshot), a folding top, and a slightly upgraded interior. Super Sports also featured a hood ornament of a bird, which this car appears to have. If indeed this is a Super Sports model, it’s extremely rare. Only about 2,500 Crosley sports cars were produced between 1949 and 1952 – fewer than 400 were Super Sports.
Crosley’s 1951 model offerings.
While Crosley sports cars were slow (considerably slower than an MG) and spartan, they were cheap – selling for under $1,000. However, offering a cheap, small sports car was not enough to raise Crosley’s sinking fortunes. Powel Crosley had pumped $3 million of his personal money into his car company in the early 1950s, and eventually concluded that “it would be unwise to carry on indefinitely.” Crosley Motors was sold to General Tire in 1952. General wasn’t interested in the cars, but rather Crosley’s factories and machinery; auto production was stopped shortly thereafter.
I had just one chance – from where I was stopped in traffic – to photograph this car from the rear, and unfortunately my shot didn’t turn out so hot. But I was just glad to get a glimpse of one of these cars at all. Given that it’s being transported with care, it seems likely that this sports car will be restored, and maybe I’ll catch up with it at a car show sometime in the future. Or even better, maybe I’ll see it driving around powered by its own high-revving engine.
Photographed in Annandale, Virginia in October, 2021.
Related Reading:
Automotive History: The Rise and Fall Of The Crosley Automobile Jeff Nelson
CC For Sale: 1951 Crosley Hotshot – The First American Sports Car? Chris Cieslak
Nice work. I’ve seen a hot shot in a museum but never on the street.
The Crosley engine would live on into the 70s in various outboard motors. It was one of the 1st 4-cycle outboards.
This link has a bit of history on the motor. It appears the design was not developed by Crosley, but rather built by them under license.
https://everythingaboutboats.org/bearcat/
Thanks for that link. I knew that the Homelite 55 was an offshoot of the same engine used in the four cylinder Crosleys, but did not know the intermediate story, with Fageol and such. And I didn’t quite know or remember how the original COBRA engine was conceived by Taylor. It’s quite the story of a very innovative engine; a real tribute to its esigner.
Could the last engine mentioned in the above linked article, described as a “marinized” version of a British motor used in some automotive and fire pump applications, be based on the Coventry Climax FW used in some British sports cars, most famously the original Lotus Elite? According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Climax the answer is YES! And to carry things even further into an interesting nexus, the same Wikipedia page shows that older Coventry Climax engines were used in British Crossley (with two S’es) cars, built in Manchester.
If that is a Super Sport it has some real value.
Ungainly looking thing with the top up does it improve with it down, and disc brakes on a sports care before Jaguar discovered them but Jaguars needed them, turning a Crossley into the wind should have stopped it
That’s quite a sighting! Crosleys always surprise me as being American, they come across as so much more post-WWII German when there were all kinds of weird little pseudo-cars being developed and running around, it would seem to fit in there very well with the Goggos and Messerschmitt Kabinenrollers etc. But in the US, where the large car ruled, it just seems toy-like and not really serious.
There had been a large number of truly small cars floated in the US since way back; the Bantam (based on the English Austin 7) being the most successful by far. In fact one could say that the Crosley took the baton from Bantam. Outside of those two, the rest were mostly just prototypes, kits or very limited cottage industry items.
The only reason Crosley did as well as it did is because of Crosley’s capital and because of the massive crush of demand for anything that moved after the war. Once that market boom ended, so did Crosley. Too small for Americans.
As to coming across as a German micro-car, it would have needed swing axles and an air cooled engine to really pull that off. Solid axles front and rear were a big no-no in Germany. More like a cottage industry thing from the UK, where there were also many obscure little cars and sports cars made that never or rarely saw the light of day in the US. It reminds me a bit of a UK “trials” car, like the Dellow and such.
If I remember correctly the original Crossley block was sheet metal oven brazed together. It was both light and strong, but most of them rusted through. Eventually they went to a cast block, but their reputation was shot.
Mike, just in case you are not familiar with the name, you wrote “Crossley”, instead of Crosley. There was a pre-WW2 British car called the Crossley, often confused with the Crosley. I know, because I used to do the same.
Now about the sheet metal block, made of Stamped steel, brazed together with copper. This had been designed as a WW2 engine to power things like generator sets, where they would run for hours at fixed RPM. The engines were not expected to last through 2-3 years of wartime use.
After the war, the company elected to use the COpper BRAzed [COBRA] engines. Had they also copper electro-plated the internal parts exposed to the cooling water jackets, to prevent rust, they might have been able to keep the engine.
But what ultimately did Crosley in was the fact that Americans still wanted large cars for their primary vehicle, and if they bought a second car, they typically bought a second hand car, or a small foreign car from England, France, Sweden or Germany, and a smattering of other countries like Japan.
The foreign and used car prices often beat Crosley, they never really made enough vehicles to accomplish a cost saving advantage from increased production.
Crosley was in many ways the Elon Musk of his era; he made his money in the high-tech of his time (radio) and indulged himself in car manufacturer. His experience, and failure, really does point out how remarkable is Musk’s success with Tesla. It ain’t easy.
Let’s not leave out “Mad Man Muntz” with his cheap TVs, but rather sophisticated Muntz Jet.
I think I recall seeing a Hot Shot that year some of us met at Country Classic Cars near St. Louis. That may be the only one I have ever seen. I have to say, “Hot Shot” is one of the best names ever for a sporty little car. It is a shame they couldn’t put some more power to the wheels, as that might have broadened the niche.
Crosley didn’t just manufacture radios, he was a broadcaster too. His station, WLW in Cincinnati may have been the most powerful broadcast station in the world, or certainly the US with a transmitter capable of 100,000 watts. My hometown station of WOWO in Fort Wayne was a 50,000 watt clear channel station and it could be heard all over the US at night, so I cannot imagine how much stronger WLW would have been at full blast.
I believe it was a Hot Shot we saw.
Seems like the grandfather of the 80s kei sports cars (Daihatsu Coppen, Suzuki Cappuccino), although the engine is too big! I wish the owner good luck with the restoration.
JP,
While Crosley’s radio station probably had the capability of transmitting at 100,000 watts, all AM radio stations in America are still to this day limited to 50,000 watts of actual transmitting. Powel Crosley was known to get creative with words. Yes, the station’s transmitter electronics could be cranked up to 100,000 watts, just as Crosley Hot Shots could possibly reach 80mph!
The reason why the stations had equipment of that size was so in an emergency, to reach more people, the Feds could authorize a transmitting power increase. I am familiar with the FCC broadcast regs, and I was awarded my first FCC Radio and TV operating engineer’s license in 1968.
There were a few “pirate” stations operating in Mexico before WW2 that often exceeded the 100,000 level, most notably a quack doctor by the name of John R. Brinkley.
The great-grandfather of shock radio, Brinkley was the first broadcaster to have his license taken away by the FCC. A down-home-sounding physician who originally built a radio station in order to entertain the patients who came to his clinic in Kansas, Brinkley offered his patients something better than Viagra. He claimed that he could counteract male impotency by transplanting goat gonads into the human scrotum. Thousands of individuals underwent the procedure in hopes of becoming, as the good doctor put it, “the-ram-that-am-with-every-lamb.”
Brinkley made a fortune, and his radio station, KFKB (Kansas First, Kansas Best), became one of the most popular stations in the country. He branched out into sex lectures and started a prescription by mail service known as the medical question box. But Brinkley attracted as many enemies as patients, and the government took away his license to broadcast in 1929.
Not to be denied, Brinkley was all ears when enterprising boosters in Del Rio, Texas came up with a plan to get him back on the airwaves. They suggested that he build a radio station outside the reach of meddling Washington bureaucrats across the silvery Rio Grande River in the town of Acuna, Mexico. Brinkley thought it was a great idea. He built a radio station in Mexico with its signal directed at the U.S. The Mexicans didn’t mind pocketing the doctor’s licensing payments, or annoying American officials who had stolen all the best international frequencies for their own use.
Brinkley’s border radio station XER (later changed to XERF), was the most powerful station in the world, broadcasting at about one million watts of radiated power. You could pick up the station on bedsprings, barbed wire fences, even on the fillings in your teeth [not really!]. Folks as far away as Russia, Finland, and the Philippines could tune in to the sounds of country music, Bible-thumping preachers, astrologers, and organ music (no pun intended), which came blasting through the ether from Brinkley’s border radio behemoth.
As for WOWO, I was really into electronics until I got my first car, and slowly the electronics became a back seat to cars. But during my high school years, I drove a 1956 Packard sedan that was factory equipped with dual power antennas at the back of the rear fenders. I had replaced the dummy antenna with one that had the input wiring. Now using an antenna booster on the 2 antennas, and parked on a high ridge not far from home, on a good clear night I could tune in WOWO very clearly from the northern Washington, DC area. “WOOOO WOOOO”
Thanks to Bill Crawford of the Austin Chronical for some of the above info.
I first read details about John R. Brinkley’s exploits in a biography of the Carter Family. The Carters moved to Del Rio for a few years because Brinkley offered them a generous contract for a radio show. Though more known for his “medicine,” Brinkley contributed significantly to the development of country music through his shows. But regardless of his endeavors, his personality was quite unique… it’s hard to believe that the stories about him are true, but they apparently are.
If I’m ever in Del Rio, I will absolutely visit the Brinkley Mansion. He was quite a person.
I’ll go without that transplant, thank you very much…
The Wikipedia page on Crosley claims the FCC rule limiting radio stations to 50 kilowatts of transmitting power didn’t take effect until 1939, and in the five years preceding that their station did send out 500 kw broadcasts (which were temporarily resumed for certain government approved uses during WW2). I don’t know enough about radio history to know if this is or isn’t correct.
From several sources I can confirm (as much as I can anything) that WLW ran a transmitter at 500kw. Much of the equipment is still there, and it is a something of a hot spot for us radio geeks to visit.
Here’s one, with a cool Lester Beall poster.
Here’s Dr. Brinkley’s 1940 Cadillac V16 coupe
I forgot to mention; In 1968 my dad & I found a 1950 Packard eight sedan with only 1,800 miles on it. The guy selling it had several V-16 Cadillacs in his garage behind his palatial home in McLean, VA, including Dr. Brinkley’s Cadillac, it doesn’t show in the photo above, but the color was a striking dark turquoise metallic, including the metal trunk. He had bought a 1935 V-12 Packard and the 1950 came with it as a package deal. My dad said yes to the guy’s final offer of $800, and at the age of 16, I had a car of my own to drive.
The big “cabinet radio” in the color ad; my grandparents had one that looked much like that.Remember it from some photo’s I saw “ion’s” ago.
I believe the pic was from roughly 1948-50.
They had quite a nice home before I was born.
Smiling a bit now.
I just read the ad, which says 1942 in the text. It refers to the Crosley Floating Jewel tone arm that eliminates all “needle scratch” from records. Har har, as if that was possible on those old shellac 78s. This dredged up a memory, an aunt and uncle had an old 40s era setup like this and I remember being entranced by the way “Crosley Floating Jewel” was written in gold script on the hugely oversized tone arm much like the one in the photo.
Any major brand from 1948-49 would have been offering phonographs that played LPs, which hit the market in 1948, though I suppose 78-only systems were still offered in less expensive models for a time.
New 78-only phonographs quickly disappeared after LPs and 45s were introduced, at least in America, but continued to be made in a few corners of the world which had some interesting consequences. Many parents stuck their old 78-only record players in their kids’ rooms when they upgraded to the newer formats, which is why vinyl 78-rpm records of childrens’ material were still being made well into the 1960s. More interesting is that while new shellac 78s were no longer made in the US by about 1959 – a bit longer in the UK – they held on several years after that in Argentina, Russia, Brazil, and several other countries, long enough that early Beatles records made it onto shellac 78s. The last holdout was apparently India which had a big supply of wind-up 78 phonos that didn’t need electricity. That’s where EMI sent their British 78 pressers to, where they were in use at least through 1968. I want want want a shellac 78 of “Hey Jude” with “Revolution” on the b side – there’s something all wrong yet so satisfying about dropping that heavy needle in your Victrola or Crosley and hearing hard rock blaring from the acoustic-horn speaker.
Absolutely interesting article. I remember the two-door models as they were the most common. Disc brakes front. Fiberboard interior panels (YUK!).
I remember passing by Crosley Field on I-75 the first time I went through Cincinnati just after graduation from high school (June 1970). Checking Wikipedia just now, I found the last Reds game played there was on June 24 of that year before the team moved to the now-demolished Riverfront Stadium.
An elderly neighbor at our old house, before we moved ten years ago, had a Hot Shot which was set up as a vintage H-Modified racer. Well, actually he had raced it back in the day, stored it for decades, then restored it (he was a mechanic). He brought it by once … like this one, on a trailer; unlike this one, quite immaculate. Of course in those pre-digital days it didn’t occur to me to take a picture. Thanks to Google I just found a reference to it, though no picture: “[he] also had a beautiful HotShot with Bearcat and B210 box”. Assume Bearcat refers to one of the later Homelite engines, but not sure if B210 refers to Datsun or something else.
This Crosley looks in good shape ~ they were wretched awful cars, all of them, the few Hot Shots I have seen in the flesh were horribly rusted .
Crosely was the company that invented shelves in your refirgerator’s door .
There’s a detailed book about quack dr. Brinkley and his adventures, it’s well worth the read .
-Nate
On one of my trips over to US from UK to visit friend in the hills in NM found he had picked up what is I remember he said was a Crosley, not a sports but an estate car which does resemble a British estate like a Morris 1000, he also had a Bradley sports.
A couple of photos attached, sorry not curbside shots, more junk yard but possibly of interest ?
and the Bradley, must check if he still has both of them
Pictures, please .
Crosley’s are horribly crude yet cute and have some good engineering . they’re finally becoming popular and worth dragging out and saving .
I’ll stick with my elderly British cars thankyouverymuch .
-Nate
Wow ~ I can’t believe I was finally able to attach an image .
1959 Metropolitan Nash F.H.C., I’m hoping to get it running again .
Notice one of my ‘Supervisors” overseeing .
-Nate
Nate,
You listed the car as a 1959 Nash Metropolitan. I see the Nash emblem in the grill, but the last year for that emblem was 1957. In 1958 onwards it should have a red “M” emblem, as both the Nash and Hudson emblems and names were dropped from the Metropolitan line.
Does your car have a trunk lid? Does your car have vent windows in the doors? If the answer to both questions is yes, then you have a Metropolitan by Austin, England, Sold thru AMC Rambler dealers. If the answers are no, then you likely have a 1956 or 57 Nash Metropolitan.
That said, some dealers had a terrible time selling Mets, and cars sometimes sat for years before finally selling. So it’s possible your car is a pre-1958 version, sold new as a 1959, because most people back then didn’t know the difference!
And just being nosy, is the VW engine on the stand for the VW under the tarp? What year is it?
Hi Bill ;
The original emblem was crazed and no good, I was at an annual Met Club meet in Sacramento, Ca. a few decades back when a woman walked up to me, opened her purse and gave me this emblem, I hand polished it the best I could and there it will remain .
Yes, my car is a 1959, a late ’59 as it has vent wings, glovebox door (not the accessory one), and a one piece backlight ~ I think the three piece ones look better but they also leak like rusty sieves . I also have the later version of the bench seat ~ like old VW Beetles, Mets have many running changes and low use obscure parts .
This one still has the original 1500C.C. high compression cylinder block, I’ve modified it some here and there too, will flesh it out if requested .
-Nate
Oh yeah ~ that engine is a 36HP (I’m sure you knew this) that I’m told is a 1954, I’ve not bothered to check either the serial number nor the casting date code on the generator tower .
It’s pretty stiff, I’m sure the cylinders are rusty .
If you know anyone who wants it, please let me know .
-Nate
Nate, A 1954 VW engine casing from 1954 is quite hard to find, and I’m sure if you put an ad in the Samba & VW club, you will get people contacting you.
Thanx Bill ! ;
Does anyone else know / care about the 1954 only 30 HP ? .
I ass-U-me they’d want a ’54 case to sort of mach the oval they’re building ? .
I have a N.O.S. unstamped 25HP case I snagged in the 1970’s, as it turned out I put a ’54 36 engine I rebuilt into my ’53 Zwitter split window, when I sold that car on I saved the engine and put it into my 1960 #117 DeLuxe sliding sunshine roof Beetle my son came home from the hospital in and still is rusting in his back yard next to my old ’63 356B Porsche….
I’d love to sell the 35HP case but have been ripped off before by the jerks @The Samba….
-Nate
An unstamped 25hp engine is correct for all bugs from 47 to early 54, I should think that case has some significant value.
And yes, the ’54 early 30hp engine would be of interest for anyone wanting to restore their bug & replace a non-matching engine with the correct. From what I know of them, the ’54 30hp engine numbers are 1-0695282 to 1-0935526. So if your engine is in that range, it’s a ’54 block. It’s not difficult to increase the HP without changing the outward appearance of the engine, so people want an original case that can be upgraded a bit.
My email is billmccoskey@aol.com, I’ve got more for you, with photos that I can’t post here.