{"id":498701,"date":"2020-04-13T15:20:13","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T22:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportscardigest.com\/\/?p=105332"},"modified":"2024-12-27T12:59:28","modified_gmt":"2024-12-27T12:59:28","slug":"hey-hot-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.supercars.net\/blog\/hey-hot-shot\/","title":{"rendered":"1952 Crosley Super Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1972, I was 10-years old when my dad drove home in a tiny little black convertible. I\u2019d never seen anything like it. American cars were giant hulks with trunks that could swallow a Mini-Cooper and front bench seats that could double as living room sofas. Our 1952 Crosley Super Sport (a Hot Shot with hinged doors) was dad\u2019s bartered payment for $225.00 worth of legal services. My brother and I hopped in and we took off, both of us flopping around in the passenger seat, no seatbelts, wind blowing everywhere, dad smiling as he wound up first gear (30 feet), second gear (maybe 30 yards), and into third. A city block later, we were moving along at a whopping 35 mph. It didn\u2019t matter. Dad took us for ice cream that day. Life was good. Life is always good when you are in a Crosley.<\/p>\n

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The Crosley Hot Shot that started it all for the author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Crosley founder, Powel Crosley, had been a very successful businessman. He was among the largest manufacturers of consumer appliances and, in 1925, the world\u2019s largest seller of radios. Having produced automobiles prior to the second world war, Crosley was no stranger to automobile manufacturing when he set about refining his vehicles for post-war volume production. The idea was simple: produce a low-cost line of versatile, thrifty, and stylish cars. Much like his other products, Crosley cars offered a great deal of value and durability without a lot of excess. However, America was fresh out of five years of austerity and gas rationing, so the Crosley with its 30 mpg fuel efficiency, ease of use, cheap service costs, and small footprint, was simply not what American consumers were looking for in a family car. The idea of high \u201ccommuting\u201d costs was on nobody\u2019s mind when fuel was .25 per gallon. But Crosley soldiered on, implementing ideas from their appliance-based successes, leading with innovations the \u201cBig Three\u201d could not so easily offer in a range of sedans, wagons, pickup trucks, the sporty Hot Shot, and the durable Farm-O-Road.<\/p>\n

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With the addition of a lightweight, fiberglass body, the Crosley lent itself well to becoming a formidable H-Mod racecar, such as this 1955 Crosley Roadster Special. Photo: Brad Fox<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Crosley also offered many firsts in the industry including the first American production car outfitted with four-wheel caliper disc brakes (1949), the first American production sports car (the 1949 Hot Shot), the first to offer an overhead camshaft engine (1946) in a production car, the first company to use the term \u201cSport-Utility\u201d to describe a wagon with utility-based features, and the first post-war production car with integrated, flat-sided fenders blended into the hood and trunk. And while all these important firsts were not bringing Crosley top sales numbers, it didn\u2019t stop a Crosley from placing first at the 1950 Sebring Races, ahead of Ferrari and other European giants, using the \u201cIndex of Performance\u201d to calculate their win. Struggling with sales, even though the new CIBA-based overhead cam engine was a fantastic replacement for the dismally unreliable CoBra (Copper and stamped steel) engine formerly in their 1946-1948 cars, Crosley ceased production in 1952. The engine, however, went on for another 20 year as the Fageol, Aerojet, Homelite and Bearcat series engines used in race and recreational boats, military vehicles, and service trucks. Italian builder Bandini even developed a twin-cam head engineered specifically using the Crosley block to power his cars.<\/p>\n