Vauxhall vs KRIT vs SCAT: Edwardian titans do battle

By Simon Hucknall

| 25 Sep 2024

Classic & Sports Car – Vauxhall vs KRIT vs SCAT: Edwardian titans do battle

“If you’ve driven a Vauxhall 30-98 before, you’ll have no problem,” says Tony Lees as I mount his 1913, 11,776cc Hispano-Suiza aero-engined Vauxhall Viper for a few laps of Mallory Park.

Well, I have driven 30-98s, but that’s like saying I’m familiar with Indian cuisine because I’ve had a few kormas, before tucking into my first vindaloo.

Nothing prepares you for the sensory onslaught of an 111-year-old car with twice its original cylinder count, and (conservatively) three and a half times more power than when its chassis rolled out of the factory.

This aero-engined racing car’s Vauxhall badge only tells half its story

More so the 720lb ft torque peak, which arrives so early that your journey to top gear is a blur of double-declutched changes, after which this Edwardian leviathan is poised for 100mph-plus down Mallory’s straights.

It all sounds slightly unhinged.

The aura of automotive insanity is tripled as the Vauxhall is joined by two sparring partners from the Edwardian racing scene: a 1911 KRIT 100hp Aero, its 9.2-litre engine also pinched from a fighter plane; and a 1911 SCAT Type C with a 9.3-litre motor that’s the only one here designed for the car it still powers.

The Vauxhall Viper Aero’s magnificent Hispano-Suiza V8 is the largest engine here

If you’ve attended Goodwood’s Members’ Meeting in recent times, you will have seen each of them in the SF Edge Trophy, their drivers perched impossibly high above mammoth steering wheels, wrangling these ancient monuments through Woodcote and Lavant at unfeasibly high speeds while barely breaking 2000rpm.

All three perfectly epitomise the immediate pre- and post-WW1 fascination with outright speed among a burgeoning collective of racers and thrill-seekers.

The first decade of the 20th century had been experimental for fledgling car businesses, but, once the basic template for a motor car had been set, the need for speed begat an entire motorsport industry.

Hot exhausts flank the Vauxhall Viper Aero’s (left) fuel tank

In Britain, Brooklands became the showcase for such endeavour, while in Europe events such as the Targa Florio tested giant-engined racers to their limits and beyond on public roads.

However, soon after Great War hostilities ended, another type of devil-may-care merchant surfaced.

Fearless fighter pilots, lucky enough to have emerged unscathed, still hankered after a dogfight-equalling adrenalin rush on terra firma.

Britain’s Royal Flying Corps was selling crated and serviced biplane engines for £50 each; installed in a sturdy pre-war chassis, they provided all of the ingredients for a road car with explosive performance, yet costing considerably less than a new sporting Bentley, Sunbeam or Vauxhall.

The Vauxhall Viper Aero’s big steering wheel provides anchorage for the driver

That, Tony suspects, is how the Viper – which he’s owned since 2007 – came together around a century ago.

Based on a 1913 C-type chassis, the type that underpinned the 25hp (RAC-rated) ‘Prince Henry’, the donor car would likely have been fitted with a D-type 4-litre ‘four’, producing 86bhp.

So to say that swapping said unit for something of nearly three times the capacity was transformative is an understatement.

That something was a stock, 200hp-rated (but since dynoed at nearer 300bhp) Hispano-Suiza HS8B V8, which had formerly powered a 1918 Royal Aircraft Factory SE5a biplane, and was one of the greatest engine designs from Hispano’s Marc Birkigt.

The Hispano-Suiza footplate gives a hint as to what lies beneath the Vauxhall’s long bonnet

Being the second generation of the HS8, the B provided direct drive to the aircraft’s propeller (the first iteration used less reliable geared drive), and was immensely advanced.

An all-aluminium unit, with hollow connecting rods and aluminium pistons, it was lighter than the Vauxhall lump it replaced, despite having twice the number of cylinders.

It employed a single overhead camshaft on each of its banks, and a steel crank – technology rarely seen in the automotive world at the time.

The Vauxhall Viper Aero feels weighty in bends

It was a remarkably under-stressed engine: despite being capable of sending the SE5a to a maximum airspeed of 138mph at up to 17,000ft, propellers had reached their design limits, with the tips cavitating (chopping up) the air at higher rotations.

As such, the engine’s operating ceiling was a mere 2400rpm and, in the case of the Viper, it generates its tank-pulling maximum torque at little more than half that.

Confusingly, the engine in Tony’s car was made by the Wright Brothers in the USA – one of many manufacturers producing HS8Bs under licence – and is not the Wolseley version, which happened to be named Viper.

The Vauxhall Viper Aero’s bewildering array of dials intimidates the first-timer

Much of the rest of this machine is genuine, period-correct Vauxhall.

Along with the Prince Henry’s pressed-steel chassis, suspended by semi-elliptic springs front and back, and braked at the rear only by 16in drums, it uses a standard Vx steering box and a radiator from an A-type.

The four-speed transmission is a D-type unit with a multi-plate clutch, but with reinforced internals to cope with gargantuan torque.

Minimalist switchgear in the 1913 Vauxhall C-type-based Viper

Amusingly, the Viper has taken Tony and his wife, Jenny, on multiple European tours and holidays – despite an 8mpg average – as well as regularly competing at multiple Vintage Sports-Car Club events, including wins in the Edwardian Trophy, the Metallurgique Trophy and – aptly – the Marc Birkigt Trophy.

(Just don’t ask him about his most recent Members’ Meeting outing where, after a final-lap spat on track – and infield – with Julian Majzub’s Sunbeam ‘Indianapolis’, he was demoted to a second-place finish after appearing to inch beyond the Sunbeam at the chequered flag.)

The Viper intimidates before you even fire up its big V8.

30 litres, 20 cylinders, 400bhp… and more than a century old

The pared-back bodywork has a brutal elegance about it, and even manages to retain Vauxhall’s trademark bonnet flutes.

There are no wings or running boards, and the area aft of the two deep bucket seats houses the 120-litre fuel tank and a toolbox, framed by the Hispano’s two large-bore exhaust tips.

Climb aboard and your feet navigate around a three-pedal, centre-throttle arrangement, but with the right-hand transmission-brake pedal now redundant.

You peer down at a bluff aluminium bulkhead awash with instruments, the most important of which today is the large Elliott Brothers tachometer next to your left foot, reading up to 2600rpm and marked ‘90’[mph] at 2400.

The KRIT’s radiator reveals its ‘brass era’ origins

Retard the ignition, flick on magneto one, then push the electric starter: instant aero-V8 magnificence shatters the calm.

Give it some air pressure in the fuel tank via the brass pump on the left of the dash, then turn on magneto two and advance the ignition.

Engage first in the inboard, reverse-H-pattern right-hand gearbox, and release the outboard handbrake (your only way of stopping).

You change up quickly so as not to over-rev, but also because torque is so abundant that no more than 1200rpm is needed to get you moving at a fair lick.

The KRIT 100hp Aero racer’s spartan cockpit

The large, string-wrapped steering wheel gives a secure point of purchase – reassuring when there’s nothing to stop you falling out – and, while heavy, is surprisingly taut and high-geared.

There’s no screen at all, so within a hundred yards I’ve lost my cap and very nearly my glasses, too. Who cares?

You feel the weight of the Viper as soon as you turn into Gerard’s, Mallory’s long right-hander, but it feels planted and predictable.

Open it up along the straights and the Viper is omnipotent, the effortlessness of its low-revving V8 at odds with the spectacular rate at which it gathers velocity.

Vast twin chains beneath your thighs drive the KRIT’s rear wheels

Pull back on the effective handbrake for the next bend, then power through in top, still with ample thrust in reserve.

Even at moderate speeds it’s hugely physical; what it must be like in the thick of a track battle at twice the speed beggars belief.

That’s something Neil Gough, owner of the KRIT 100hp Aero racer, is only just coming to terms with.

Neil built this car from a box of components imported from the USA in 2002, and has only been racing it for the past two seasons – hence the novice ‘X’ still applied to its industrial-sized fuel tank.

The KRIT 100hp Aero is the friendliest of our trio to the uninitiated

Nonetheless, a creditable third in this year’s SF Edge Trophy race proved that he is getting to grips with his steed.

Like the Vauxhall, Neil’s car started life as something far more humble.

Built by the KRIT Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, it’s likely to have been powered by a conventional 22hp ‘four’ delivering drive to its rear axle via a sliding-gear transmission.

The name KRIT, or ‘K-R-I-T’, may have been derived from the company’s financial backer and sometime designer Kenneth Crittenden, but, either way, the company itself was short-lived.

The KRIT 100hp Aero racing car’s exposed concentric push- and pull-rods make for quite a sight on start-up

Founded in 1909, it was purchased two years later by Walter S Russel of the Russel Wheel and Foundry Company – ostensibly a rail-car manufacturer – but folded in 1915, after the European and Australian export market it had pursued crashed following the outbreak of war.

As to how Neil’s car acquired the epic Curtiss OXX-6 aero engine that now powers it, nobody really knows, but it’s safe to say that, like the Vauxhall, it was probably converted during the 1920s.

Another single-cam-per-bank V8, this time displacing 9299cc and with fully exposed rocker gear, the OXX-6 was a rare development of the more common OX-5, as used in the ubiquitous Curtiss JN-4D ‘Jenny’ training aircraft employed by the US Navy, with the OXX-6 powering the company’s Model N9 Hydroplane.

KRIT’s swastika crest had very different connotations when this aero-engined car was built

Rated at 100hp at just 1400rpm, the OXX-6 gained twin-magneto ignition and an extra 10bhp versus its predecessor, and churned out a maximum of around 400lb ft of torque.

Once installed in the KRIT, drive from the Curtiss is delivered via a four-speed transaxle through a pair of substantial chains to the rear wheels.

I’m not going to contemplate what would happen if one of them was to let go…

The KRIT 100hp Aero feels mighty to drive

Compared to the Viper, there’s not even a vestige of bodywork to retain you once you’re sitting aloft in the driver’s seat.

Instrumentation across the wooden bulkhead is sparse, the most prominent being for revs – redlined at 1500rpm – supplemented by two more for air and oil pressure.

Above them all is KRIT’s trademark swastika logo, which had nothing to do with the later Nazi party and was, in reality, a long-held symbol of good fortune in the USA, way before it acquired its more sinister connotations.

With fuel-tank pressure pumped up to 2psi, taps on and carburettor flooded, the KRIT starts with a flick of the magneto switch.

The KRIT 100hp Aero racer’s simple dashboard

With only stub-exhausts jutting from the top of each cylinder, the aural assault is instant – and glorious.

It erupts into a bassy staccato beat that hurts your ears, but induces wide grins among everyone standing in the vicinity.

As with the Vauxhall, you engage first in a reversed H-pattern (to the right and up) on your right.

There’s a centre throttle again, but this time braking is by the right-hand pedal, with the hand lever used only as a parking brake.

‘A new type of devil-may-care merchant surfaced post-war: fearless fighter pilots seeking a dogfight-equalling adrenalin rush’

Accelerate away and the KRIT is by far the most user-friendly.

You change up early, but at higher revs than in the Vauxhall, meaning that for most of this short circuit you stay in third, revelling at the relative balance and composure into and out of bends.

It takes a while to shake the perception that this ancient behemoth is going to chuck you into the greenery if you push a bit too hard, but its set-up inspires such confidence that you find yourself going faster than seems prudent after just a lap or two.

This once-famous name has links with Fiat

All of this leaves the SCAT as the only one of our Edwardians to have been a racer from new. Well, almost.

Andrew Howe-Davies’ Type C is actually a painstaking recreation of the car that, in 1911, gave SCAT the first of its three pre-WW1 Targa Florio victories.

SCAT (Società Ceirano Automobili Torino) was established by Giovanni Battista Ceirano in 1906, but, with his brother Matteo, Giovanni had already laid the foundations for Italy’s automotive industry when he sold the patent to his Welleyes motor car to one Giovanni Agnelli in 1899.

Fantastic patina on the SCAT Type C racer

SCAT’s inaugural Targa entry would have been an important promotional lever for the young company.

But to compete with the likes of Mercedes, Lancia and ALFA, SCAT’s 22/32 chassis needed more firepower than offered by its existing 4.4-litre monobloc motor.

The solution came in the form of a Smith & Mabley-designed 9230cc T-head ‘four’, manufactured by the Simplex Automobile Co in New York.

The SCAT Type C’s big ‘four’ is the only unit here originally bound for a car rather than a plane

The production unit used a gravity oil feed to lubricate its crankshaft’s three main bearings.

But Targa scrutineers would have taken a dim view of what was in effect a total-loss oil system on a racing car, so SCAT equipped the engine with a camshaft-driven pump that scavenged the oil from its pipes, returning it to a 2-litre catch-tank from which the mains could be fed.

Making 100bhp, the unit employed an early crossflow-type cylinder head, with intake and exhaust valves on opposing sides of the block, and updraught carburetion from a single Zenith SS.

A 1908 Darracq four-speed ’box (now uprated with a 1950s clutch to deal with the torque) transmitted drive to the rear axle.

The SCAT leads this pre-war pack around Mallory Park

Andrew’s car is faithful to that 1911 winner, in which Ceirano’s brother Ernesto completed three laps of the Sicilian road course in 9 hrs, 32 mins and 22 secs, averaging 29.08mph.

Not only does it use period running gear, but also an original SCAT 22/32 chassis and axles, all of which were discovered as a collection of parts in Australia in the ’80s.

In Andrew’s ownership since 2007, the car is a VSCC and Goodwood regular, and has won the Pomeroy Edwardian Trophy, the Sam Clutton Memorial Trophy at Prescott and the Dick Baddiley Trophy here at Mallory.

Like Tony, Andrew has also used the SCAT for various long-haul European schleps.

The SCAT Type C racing car’s wicker-backed chairs don’t offer vast amounts of support

The word ‘patina’ could have been coined for this car, its battle-scarred bodywork making it appear heroic, purposeful and somehow stoic.

As with the others, you climb up on the passenger side and drop into a comfy, wicker-backed seat.

Standing out amid countless scrutineering tags across the bulkhead is a rev counter marked in 200rpm increments to 1000rpm.

To your right is a conventional H-pattern gearshift, at your feet a three-pedal layout with the throttle in the ‘normal’ position.

The SCAT Type C racing car feels the lightest on track, but with the most play in the helm

Fuel and ignition on, flood the carb, press the starter then, once the huge ‘four’ catches, flick on the magneto.

On the move, the SCAT is the lightest to handle, though with more play in the steering.

I’ve never driven such a low-revving vehicle and, other than struggling slightly with the gearshift (entirely down to the user), the SCAT thumps around our stand-in Targa Florio course at remarkable pace, seemingly with its engine turning at little above an idle.

There really is no better illustration of early motoring’s pioneering spirit than this trio.

That they still thrill on road and track after more than a century is a blessing that should be bottled for future generations.

Images: John Bradshaw

Thanks to: Mallory Park Racing Circuit

Factfiles

Vauxhall Viper Aero

Sold/number built 1913 (chassis)/one
Construction pressed-steel chassis, aluminium and timber body
Engine all-alloy with steel cylinder liners, sohc-per-bank 11,776cc V8, twin SU carburettors, dual magneto ignition
Max power 200bhp (rated)
Max torque 720lb ft @ 1250rpm
Transmission four-speed manual, RWD
Suspension semi-elliptic springs f/r
Steering worm and wheel
Brakes 16in rear drums, hand-lever operated
Length 13ft 5in (4100mm)
Width 5ft 6in (1700mm)
Height 4ft 11in (1500mm)
Wheelbase 10ft 5in (3050mm)
Weight 2756lb (1250kg)
Mpg 8
0-60mph n/a
Top speed 116mph
Price new n/a
Price now n/a

KRIT 100hp Aero racer

Sold/number built 1911 (chassis)/one
Construction pressed-steel chassis, steel body
Engine all-alloy with cast-iron barrels, ohv 9299cc 90° V8, single Zenith 06DS carburettor, dual magneto ignition
Max power 100bhp
Max torque 400lb ft (est)
Transmission four-speed manual transaxle with chain drive, RWD
Suspension: front three-quarter-elliptic springs rear semi-elliptic springs
Steering worm and wheel
Brakes 12in rear drums
Length 12ft 3in (3733mm)
Width 5ft (1524mm)
Height 4ft (1219mm)
Wheelbase 9ft (2743mm)
Weight 2204lb (1000kg) (est)
Mpg 10-12
0-60mph n/a
Top speed 100mph (est)
Price new n/a
Price now £250-300,000*

SCAT Type C racer

Sold/number built 1911/one
Construction pressed-steel chassis, aluminium and timber body
Engine all-iron, ‘T-head’ 9230cc ‘four’, single Zenith SS updraught carburettor, dual magneto ignition
Max power 100bhp
Max torque n/a
Transmission four-speed manual, RWD
Suspension semi-elliptic springs f/r
Steering worm and wheel
Brakes rear drums
Length 13ft 11in (3980mm)
Width n/a
Height n/a
Wheelbase 10ft 3in (3125mm)
Weight 2645lb (1200kg) (est)
Mpg 10-20
0-60mph n/a
Top speed 100mph+ (est)
Price new n/a
Price now £250,000*