Weiler Motor Company - Reliability there is no alternative

[Rossriders]

I figured I may as well finally start a thread about my company here, and for starters, part 1 and a preview of parts 2 and 3 (more to follow if I can get to it)

Weiler Motor Company
Established: 1961
Country of origin: USA
Scale: ‘Moderate’
Founder: Michael Rondell (African American)

Other key personnel
Jonathan Makra (general purpose service, utility vehicles, later customer vehicles and began the motor sport
programs)
Elizabeth Cayden (took control of major businesses in the 70s’, began the ‘modular engine program’ that is still in
operation today)

Moto: Reliability - there is no alternative

Part 1 - founding and beginning, no alternative to reliability

Weiler Motor Company, an American manufacturer, had it’s beginnings in the mid to late 1950s when it’s
founder, a part time mechanic, was asked by a local farmer to repair a tractor motor that kept breaking with
extended periods of use.

When he saw the motor, he found several fundamental flaws with it, and set out to rebuild it altogether, while
aiming to make it far more durable and reliable, even if that reliability was regarded as ‘redundant’. The founder
was a former world-war 2 army veteran, was witness to both reliable machinery as well as unreliable ones in
addition.

This experience and awareness and significance of a device to be reliable at all occasions left a major
impression and vision to build items that would be difficult to break.

When he presented the engine to the farmer, he (the farmer) was uncertain about it at first, the founder gave a
demonstration of it and found it was a more powerful, but robust and even easy to maintain motor, even without
maintenance, it turned out to last far longer than the previous engine (which in the farmer’s case was every few
weeks compared to the new motor, which never broke for 5 years). When news of this small success reached
around town within 3 months he was asked if he could build more.

With the money he got from the first job, in addition to what he saved and already earned while working at a
manufacturer plant, he built his own machine shop complete with everything necessary then to build a motor.

With the shop he built motors identical to his first job, and sold them to those first customers. Once they were
proven to be reliable to those users, word of his success spread farther.

He maintained his small shop but soon realized he would need others to help, and even risk expanding to
accommodate demand. He previously called his small company, ‘Simple reliable motors’ but as he started to
expand at the very start of 1961, he renamed it Weiler Motor Company, taking the last few letters out of the
famed/infamous breed of dog, Rottweiler.

With the start of this ‘new’ company, it continued to expand within his own pre-set limits. Between 1959 and 61,
he started to have gearboxes assembled alongside the engines, before expanding to full power-trains and then
whole machines.

By 1962, said vehicles were general purpose utility or service vehicles including trucks, and vans for any given
Purpose or situation. From small trucks to medium sized vans.

One employee, Jonathan Makra who was a foremost engineer in the company, who’s responsible for ensuring
quality control for every vehicle they sold (as in every single one inspected at various stages of assembly),
pitched to the founder the idea of selling commercial vehicles on a small scale.

This turned out to be a small success, but it would not be until the 1970s where the company started to come
into it’s own.

Part 2 will be out…when it’s done or never…depends on how things are, including info on some cars.

[Oskiinus]

Do the part 2 and show the cars!

[Rossriders]

@Oskiinus

Do the part 2 and show the cars!

I will get to that soon as I can…wanted to do it tonight but I need to finish a few more things…I want to say it’ll be up by friday but I can’t promise. We’ll see.

[Rossriders]

Part 1.5 - Reliability and economy, and some muscle, before going face first into the
brick wall of an oil crisis

Their foray into commercial vehicles allowed them more of a reasonable profit. But at
this same time, John had also submitted one other idea that stuck, one for customer
vehicles, IE passenger vehicles of varying forms.

They started in the late 1960s with a small 2 door, 5 seat car called the Weiler Terrier.
Front engined, rear drive, with a small 4 cylinder that was in 3 customer versions, and
at least 2 for racing. The 3 cars for customers was an identical 4-banger with the
same engine block, but what separated the three was their required fuel.

Regular Unleaded was starting to become a viability and Weiler had explored options
for such fuel even if it had low octane. The other two trims were for regular leaded,
and super unleaded. No matter what engine you picked, the pricing between all 3 was
very little at best.

The car was also built with what was top line safety in the late 1960s, combined with
what turned out to be ‘bullet proof’ engines and it began to catch attention.

It was further propelled when Weiler had several Terrier models to be modified into
racing machines, namely for the Trans-am Under 2 category.

While the car’s initial track results were so-so, what they learned gave them
information they would later slowly integrate back into the road going models,
including suspension and engine setups, as well as tires.

At this era in at least America, fuel economy was not as major a concern as it was in
other parts of the world. Regardless, Weiler wanted to build something with
‘respectable’ fuel economy and this model achieved it with 28mpg (US).

They expanded to build a second car, called the ‘Hardy’.

It made it’s debut at the Los Angeles auto show in 1969 and soon was at dealerships
in parts of the US by 1970. In 1971 the car replaced the Terrier as the primary
small-engine category, now under 2.5 liters.

The Hardy had the first of what would be the company, their Modular engine
program.

The basic idea was to have set engines at key displacements, to which a family would
all share the same basic engine block (same exact displacement) and have parts
equipped or changed according to what given purpose that engine was to serve with
any vehicle. This first motor was the AR4-25. An aluminum block 2 and a half liter 4
cylinder, with a single cam and 2 valves per cylinder.

It was also their first road-going model to use an aluminum block engines, such was
experimented during their racing programs.

–Racing
Along with customer and commercial vehicles, they begun to explore motor-sports first
on a small level, before pursuing something more serious.

Starting in 1965 and 1967, they took a risk to enter small level formula races with
experimental aluminum engines, in indycar, before trying the waters in formula 3 and
formula 2 respectively.

Their engines had mixed success with what cars they were paired with, and they took
what they could learn from all these engines, to see how they could make them more
durable, economical, and powerful.

During this time, they entered and competed in touring car be it Trans-am or any
touring car racing series in America. Their results gained attention elsewhere
including Britain and Australia, and soon enough the Hardy was exported to these
countries with mixed results.

Being an oddball light-weight when other exports from America included the Mustang
and Camaro, the 2.5L AR-4 motor along with each racing model prepared by the
teams that ran it, the car proved to be a machine always shown for punching at or
above it’s weight.

The cars themselves would not just be on the tarmac, as they would also see much
action off the road in rallying, where again, their success varied, but was a notable
entry in a sea of competitive machines.

While small cars were their forte, they had been over time considering larger vehicles,
and had experimented with a V8 option Terrier, and at least with 2 other vehicles.

By 1970, Elizabeth Cayden, a brilliant woman whom herself spent time in military
service, as well as having some racing history, came to the company with plans as
part of their ‘future proofing’ concepts in the foreseeable future.

One such idea touched on, but further expanded on by her, would be the idea of a
modular engine program.

The idea being that a family of engines all had the same engine block with
displacement unchanged. Said engines would simply have parts changed and/or
adjusted according to which ever need arose for a vehicle. It proved cost effective
and efficient and was being put into action for their mainstream motors both for
commercial/general purpose and customer/consumer vehicles.

With all this among other things, They continued progress until 1973…when Oil prices
took a massive jump in light of issues in the Middle east.

It forced the company to be ‘do or die’ in light of new and sudden changes in what
was allowed or disallowed in the world from that point onward.

As for their customer vehicles with larger engines? that is a tale for another time.

Part 2- when it’s done

Note: I had initially wanted to post this part weeks earlier, but given RL but also me
still trying to figure out the history of the company as a whole, trying to avoid retcons
(but it’s gonna happen given among other things, new features added and fan-
content).
But I suppose going back to my earlier reason, I’m still working out every
other aspect including getting into engines not yet implemented in automation among
other things.

While I have a loose idea of later eras, namely the late 1970s into the 1980s, I’ve still have to figure out proper the 1990s and 2000s.

We’ll see…