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Pic-A-Day (607) Albert Mach Fine Art - 1929 Stearns-Knight N6-80

Pic-A-Day (607) Albert Mach Fine Art

1929 Stearns-Knight N6-80

Nathan Osmun-Tanner said:

Founded in Cleveland, Ohio as the F.B. Stearns and Company by Frank Ballou Stearns in 1898 the Stearns brand was to become a grand make in American automotive history. Frank Ballou Stearns was the son of millionaire Frank M. Stearns who had made his fortune in quarrying. Born in 1879 Frank Ballou was raised in the lap of luxury. At the age of 13 Frank decided that he wanted to quit school. His father actually supported his son in this decision. Having great interest in mechanics and machinery Frank's father purchased machine equipment for him to set up in the basement of the family mansion. Frank's interest quickly turned to the desire to build an automobile. At age 17 Frank completed is very first automobile in the basement. His first automobile had a 4-cylinder engine at a time when most were only 1 or 2 cylinder engines. The engine would not work properly and Frank decided to switch to making single cylinder engines. Believing in his son's efforts Frank's father supported Frank in purchasing a barn to convert to a machine shop.

In 1898 Frank introduced his first production automobile. It was a single cylinder of buggy type construction. It featured tiller steering, wire wheels, planetary transmission, and chain drive. With this start Frank formed F.B. Stearns and Company with his brothers Raymond and Ralph. In 1901 the company switched from tiller steering to a steering wheel. By the end of 1901 roughly 50 automobiles had been built.

To control the intake of air/fuel fix into the cylinders of an engine and the exhaust exiting the cylinders engines have most commonly used a device called a poppet valve with its opening occurring by a rotating shaft with eccentric lobes to push the valve open on the stem of the valve and a return spring to push the valve closed. Engines at this time frequently needed service to the valves to keep them sealing sufficiently when closed in order for the engine to run. Frank Stearns sought out a different solution and starting in 1911 Frank offered an engine with no valves. The solution was the Knight Sleeve valve engine designed by Charles Knight of Indiana. Frank Stearns along with a few other American automobile makes bought rights to produce the Knight engine. On the Knight Sleeve Valve Engine the piston does not reciprocate directly in the fixed cylinder in the engine block. The piston reciprocates in a sleeve which reciprocates in the cylinder. The sleeve has ports (openings) which pass by ports in the engine block to allow incoming air/fuel mixture and outgoing exhaust. This method of engine construction eliminates the valve seating problem of poppet valve and makes for smoother engine operation, however, the moving sleeves are far more massive parts to move compared to poppet valves. The smoothness of the sleeve valve engine also came with greater cost as high precision machining is required to seal the moving sleeve to the cylinder.

For 1911 sales for Stearns doubled and continued to grow over the next few years as the company offered 4 and 6 cylinder versions of the sleeve valve engine. Then in August of 1915 Stearns announced the introduction of a V8 sleeve valve engine. F.B. Stearns and Company had become well established and seemingly unstoppable in their engineering, however, in 1917 Frank Stearns had become ill to the point that he retired from the company. With Frank Stearns gone the company was now under the leadership of George Booker who was a banker and former Stearns-Knight dealer. The result was closer scrutiny of the financial state of the company. Booker decided to end the expensive V8 sleeve valve engine and focus on the 4 cylinder engine. Booker also replaced much of the company’s senior management. These changes did not bode well for James Sterling who was the chief engineer responsible for the V8 sleeve valve engine. In April of 1920 James Sterling resigned from the company and took many engineering and production staff with him to begin making his own car called the Sterling Knight. Even with these changes Stearns had record sales of 3,849 units for 1920 and 3,046 for 1921, however, for 1922 sales plummeted to 693 units. The company realized that they needed more than just a 4 cylinder engine, but with sales down there was not the revenue to produce something new.

Financial backing for Stearns came in the form of John Willys and backers purchasing 150,000 shares of Stearns stock for $2.5 million. As the head of Willys-Overland Motor Company of Toledo, Ohio John Willys was familiar with the sleeve valve engine as his own brand had been using them. Although F.B. Stearns and Company retained their own identity engineering cooperation between Willys Knight and Stearns Knight engine development was taking place. Stearns now had inline 6 and 8 cylinder engines back in there line up, however as with many independent makes Stearns found it difficult to compete with the large automobile companies. By the end of 1927 Stearns sales were below 900 and continued to dwindle. The stock market crash of 1929 further hurt sales of high end automobiles and at the end of December in 1929 Stearns closed the doors.

Although Stearns-Knight automobiles didn't possess styling that stood out amongst other makes of the time they were some of the best engineered and built automobiles to be found in America or Europe. This Stearns-Knight represents the last of this great make. The body on this Stearns-Knight was built by the coach builder Robbins Body Corporation of Indianapolis. Robbins was one of the production body builders for Stutz and Marmon specializing closed bodies.

This was seen at the Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, IN.

http://www.automobilemuseum.org/