THE RADAR BRAKE

And Other New Auto Features To Come

To auto engineers and designers, the sparkling new cars in the showrooms are history. What excites them are the radical changes soon to come. When will all cars have brakes to stop a car automatically as it nears an obstacle? Are carburetors obsolete? How soon will the gas turbine replace the piston engine?

Some of the changes are soon to come. The automatic radar brake will be one of the most startling changes to be introduced by one automaker on 1957 models. The brake will be operated by a radar screen, built inconspicuously into the radiator grill. As the radar-equipped car approaches any object ahead, e.g., another car or a garage door, the radar screen will flash an impulse to the brakes, which will slow down or stop the car. The mechanism will be geared to take into account the speed of the car as well as the distance. For example, the radar car would be halted with a jolt if a car only a short distance ahead stopped suddenly. But if the slowing car were a few hundred feet ahead, the radar car would be braked easily. The radar brake can make electroni cally fast decisions for the driver who is inattentive or slow to react, can be canceled when necessary by stepping on the gas, e.g., if the driver decides to pass the car ahead. -

But the greatest engineering change in next year's models will be less spectacular; it will be the replacement of the carburetor by a fuel-injection system by at least one automaker. Long used in aircraft and racing cars, fuel injection has been thought too tricky and expensive for stock cars. But the rapidly rising cost of the new four-barrel carburetors has closed the cost gap while several practical stock-car systems have been developed. In present carburetors, gasoline is mixed with air, then sucked into the cylinders through the manifold. With a fuel-injection system, small pumps attached to each cylinder spray the fuel-air mixture under pressure directly into the firing chamber. With better engine breathing and more accurate fuel control, the system gives faster acceleration, particularly at low speeds, more effective horsepower and more gas mileage.

Fuel-injection systems, which may take years to reach all cars, will probably be the last major refinement of the present piston engine. The great change will be the turbine engine. But the first engine will probably not be a true gas turbine. It may well be a "free-piston engine," a combination of the piston engine and turbine. The idea of the engine is old, but only recently have automakers been able to eliminate many of the bugs. In the present engine, the pistons turn the crankshaft as the explosions in the cylinders drive them down, thus transfer power to the transmission and move the car. In the free-piston engine, there is no crankshaft. Instead, there are two pistons, at opposing ends of the cylinder, which force gas at tremendously high pressure into a turbine. The turbine, in turn, transmits power to the wheels through a simplified transmission. By eliminating the crankshaft and a complicated transmission, the free-piston engine cuts weight, cost and loss of horsepower by friction, thus is more efficient all around.

To many auto engineers, the free-piston engine could be the logical transition to the gas turbine. Most of the mechanical bugs in a small gas turbine for cars have already been eliminated. Chrysler, for example, has been testing a gas-turbine car on Detroit streets for months. Nevertheless, engineers estimate that the mass-produced gas-turbine auto is still at least ten years away. One reason is that heat-resisting alloys needed for turbine engines are still far too short for mass production. But the biggest reason is the economics of the auto in dustry. The industry has to progress by evolution rather than revolution, since astronomical tooling costs must be written off over a long period of years. Automakers cannot scrap their present piston-engine equipment overnight any more than they could immediately scrap their old transmission equipment when the new automatic shifts came in.

The tremendous cost of tools also slows style changes. But so does the customer; he does not want a radical style change every year simply because it turns his new car into a has been too fast. As a result, style changes are usually moderate. Cars will probably get no bigger, but they will get slightly lower and have more glass all around. By using smaller wheels and dropping the hood line, designers expect to turn out cars that look lower than present models, but actually will have the same headroom. To enable a motorist to get into a low car without bumping his head on the top, at least one automaker next year will curve the door panels into the roof. Automakers will rely even more heavily on two-and three-tone color combinations to accentuate body lines.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.