1967 Panhard 24 BT - Jay Leno's Garage

the tires last forever your brakes last a long time you're only stopping 1800 pounds you know they could have made just a big flathead engine you know but they didn't they made something extremely sophisticated and and fun to drive the engine just feels so lively it just loves to work hard just makes me smile i love driving this thing welcome to the episode of jaylon's garage the car featuring today very unusual car at least here in america 1967 pennard uh bt 24. this is truly a rare car i don't think there's probably more than a dozen of these in the states i don't know many how how many of them are actually running around i've had this for a while this is similar to the panhard dyna we did oh a while ago it is two cylinders 850cc top speed a little over 90 miles an hour maybe 94 miles an hour fascinating car gets 40 miles to the gallon extremely smooth you know all french cars are comfortable to drive and and and give just the most amazing rides they really do the softest suspension it's really about being comfortable a lot of unusual features see the brake drums here see how prominent they are the wheel bolts around there the brake drum is in here drum brakes obviously a rather tortured history to this company panard is one of the first automobile manufacturers right around the turn of the century the pennard rod on your car that you have the system penard which was the idea of engine in the front transmission in the middle rear end of the back uh it all we all take it for granted now but the french really kind of invented it and perfected it you know they used to say that germany was the birthplace of the automobile but france was the nursery france is where all the great ideas came from this is one of the great companies you know ruined by by well by the government really you know pennard used to make amazing cars like the dynamic and all these sort of big comfortable touring cars and after the war the the government came in and decided bernard you'll do this citroen you're going to be the build these cars we know you they just told people what to do limited the amount of aluminum they could use and the amount of steel so they really had to work with whatever they could pinard was always a cash poor company but a very innovative company and this is what they came up with uh i think it's a really attractive car this was to compete against the volkswagen you know in the 50s the europeans thought they could do well here in america with small economical cars as opposed to our big american gas guzzlers you know uh volkswagen had the better advertising campaign uh one of the greatest advertising campaigns of all time you know the think small and this car's a lemon and all those kind of ads that really caught people by surprise but the panard was i think a far superior car it had half the number of cylinders as a volkswagen half the displacement just about twice the horsepower a volkswagen could barely reach 68 miles an hour well this was good for well over 90 miles an hour you could put five or six people in it but the government told them no you can't build the four-door you got to build two i mean they just limited who could build what in an attempt to uh to sort of help the industry and the french really didn't you know the french's attitude was if you like one of our cars come on over here and buy one you know they didn't really sort of work hard the way volkswagen did to capture that american market or this could have been the volkswagen i think it's a lot more fun to drive the engine is fascinating i'll show you that in a little bit it's it's just a brilliant little piece of work and to get 40 miles per gallon and on the freeway this car is very very comfortable the styling is what i find really interesting if it looks a bit like the american corvair from around 1960 that's sort of deliberate because they admired that car you know the europeans thought the corvair was a great american car was as i do also they loved the greenhouse effect of it how much room there was this is a really compact car but with an amazing amount of room inside look at the rear leg room here it's for for such a tiny car with only two cylinders the only drawback is the gear shift lever which is a cable-operated deal which is kind of a bit all over the place but i that could be my fault i've got to uh fix that we've got to do something with that you know bernard did very well in the uh 24 hours of le mans and what they call the index of performance they didn't win it outright but they always seem to one win their class and they would they would always kind of come up with things to sort of help the friend well it won the most economical you know just okay anyway it wanted about 10 times something like that so the 24 stands for 24 hours at the mall the bt was the b model and the t stands for i guess tiger or tiger whatever that was their high performance model with like 60 horsepower but don't forget the volkswagen only had 36 or 38 horsepower so it was a little bit more expensive than the volkswagen by about maybe 10 percent but i think it was a far better car far more advanced car for more efficient car but that's just me i mean i like volkswagens but i just thought this is a better looking car and it didn't look quite as small as the volkswagen this you could mistake for almost a mid-size american well it's still smaller than a falcon or a corvair but uh the styling is what really set it apart this one i'm told was originally bought by a gentleman named quinn martin now if you're my age you remember tv in the 50s and 60s you'll remember a quinn martin production clang and they would it'd always be like the fbi a quinn martin production he always did a lot of those cop shows and drama shows you know and i i understand he bought this in france and brought it here i i don't have any proof of that that's just what i've been told by the previous owner so i i suppose i should find that out just an interesting piece of history uh i've never seen another one on the road in america i know there are a few here there's one in oregon and there's a couple in new england but i really have many other bt owners so hopefully i'll hear from them when this airs as you can see beautiful trim we had to make new a bit of new trim here we polished up the brake drums which was done in period the only thing i did differently was uh the seats were not leather they were vinyl but i thought you know she's a good old girl let's treat it to a nice leather interior so it's really a wonderful car it's so much fun to drive because again this is a classic case of using all the power all the time it just revs fantastic it's air-cooled uh let me let me wheel the engine in here i'll show you what i'm talking about okay now here here's your two cylinders it's it's air cooled it's got a fan in front that blows the air back which is sort of typical engine is in the front uh roller bearing crank in the ads they would say just like a bugatti which is true it does have a roll of brain crank it's got torsion bar valves let me show you how this works here notice there's no head gasser because there's no head the whole cylinder comes off kind of like a like a bmw saw deal there's just a base gasket so you can't blow a head gasket it's got a hemi head hemispherical combustion chambers if you look inside you can see the valve well there's no valves in there we see where they go but you see it's hemispherical with the spark plug in the center and this here is a torsion bar and you have a rocker arm that goes along here push rods come up the side here through these two holes here and the torsion bar it's a little tricky to adjust the valve and once you get it it's fine and there's no valve spring so float doesn't really come into the problem it's a compact little engine that's pretty light you can lift it up and put it on the workbench just to give you an idea you know we had new rods made for our christie fire engine you know the big 20 liter four cylinder given i didn't want one of those two one are those connecting rods look like here you go we had we had carrillo make us oh god you want to know what that cost for carillo to to make rods this size but they're beautiful and this is one of the original but that's that's another whole deal i just thought you get a kick out of that oh and here's one of those pistons not off of this but as you can see it's a fascinating design you see the this is the torsion bar right here which is basically just a big spring it just has a lot and it's just open close open close open close the valve and this thing loves to rev i mean it idles it shakes a bit but as soon as you put a few revolutions in it it really smooths out and it's really terrific this is uh all alloy a lot of aluminum in this motor as i said 850cc it puts about 56 foot-pounds of torque something like that which doesn't sound like a whole lot but the car doesn't weigh a whole lot it weighs just about 1800 pounds which is well you'll see when we drive it when you come for a ride you i think you'll be impressed with it because i just love driving it it's just a lot of fun generator here you can actually save more weight if you wanted to put a modern little mitsubishi or something alternate around here and lose that but i try to keep it all stock uh well you see how compact it is one person can how many cars can you take your engine out put on the workbench rebuild it and put it back together again and they're just nicely made let me wheel this out of the way again let's go to the back of the vehicle let's show you the trunk show you how much room you have in this thing well now first let's open the hood a little safety feature you've got a light here on the armrest so when you open the door in traffic it will you know so you don't get run over there you go let's open the hood now this car was running when i got it we didn't have to do much to it just cleaned the carburetor did a few things like that i didn't polish it or do any of that i re-sleeved the mast assembler for the brakes see right here you've got the aluminum cover to pull air in to cool the engine uh you see you've got cladding around the cylinders so the air distributes much bigger battery that is necessary but i like these optimas so i put that in there it actually had a much smaller battery this always makes me laugh this it looks like a martinelli's apple juice container but that's actually a brake master cylinder the french just do everything so unique it's it's really interesting the exhaust pipe bolts to the frame with a rubber piece here to take out the vibration and that's what holds the engine in place the engine mount is also the exhaust pipe that is something they've done on panards for a long time uh well it's a very simple little deal here let's close this up again let me get the key and open the trunk look at that pretty good sized trunk in there i'm actually quite a large trunk this was a family car and there's all kinds of room in here it's just a brilliant design reasonably fast well faster than it should be actually when you say two cylinders you think is oh my god how slow is that going to be it's actually way faster than any volkswagen period with half the number of cylinders and about half the displacement well not quite half but certainly two thirds yeah so what else can we show you we can show you underneath the car i got to show you them the muffler was all rotted out we had to make a brand new muffler from scratch and you know even even the french their mufflers are completely different than anybody i just well i'll show you we'll put it up on the list come on okay we've got it up on our sterile coney lift here let's show you okay here's the exhaust system that we uh we made from scratch as you can see it's different than any other exhaust system you'd find anywhere you're not going to go down to midas and get one of these uh this is all new pieces in here you want to keep it as rigid as torsion bars back here as well see here we go there's two of them right there they're your drum brakes uh okay and you have tube shocks okay this is all original to the car nice and smooth under here as you see no rust this is a nicely preserved example the front you have independent suspension then you have these uh leaf springs here see you got two into one there the exhaust coming off the let me show you those engine mounts i was talking about can you see right up in here you see this big rubber piece okay this connects to the frame and then it connects to the exhaust pipe which which is your engine mount which is really unusual and obviously you have those on both sides but how many cars can you uh there's another one there how many cars i took my engine out last week can anybody help you know i just took it out myself oh pretty cool here's that aluminum piece as well you see the way this all goes together it's fascinating isn't it it's so different than anything that we do in america or have done in america i just like the way the french think and their cars are all about comfort and ride that's what's kind of fun i mean this thing really rides well like a cadillac i mean it's it's amazing how supple it is i mean volkswagens are kind of crude and bumpy but extremely well made of course whereas this had a real sophistication that you just didn't find in a lot of other inexpensive european cars but i think it's about time we probably took it for a ride now is there anything else i'm missing here that's just about it uh here's your this is if there's one part that's not real cool it's this here this shift this is the cable here and it winds around we've got to pull that and lubricate it just get a little once the car is running it shifts fine but it's just so kind of like this all over the place you know with your hands trying to shift but other than that it's really really good but this is such an unusual car i'm glad we were able to save it come on let's take it for a ride [Music] oh this thing loves to rest i've never driven a truly light car it really is a revelation you know this thing is 1800 pounds it's just so light on its feet it's responsive you've only got 60 horsepower but it certainly feels like a lot more you got a pretty comprehensive dashboard going left to right you got your gas and your speedometer right there you've got a clock that works in the middle a nice big tachometer to your right and followed by your amp meter over there and you got various heater controls as well lights wipers horn is on the stalk back in the day i would much rather have had this than a volkswagen beetle it doesn't look like the 60s this could have been any time period french cars just have the best suspension you know bumps that make you jerk the wheel in an ordinary car this thing just kind of glides over looks like a citroen although not that sophisticated everything is opposite on french cars you know your turn signal stop because on the right side not on the left side and this is the original color i wanted to keep it as stock as i could as you can see this is a car i use to run errands and stuff in so it's not a show car we didn't really even take the engine out where you painted it didn't need to i mean the engine seems to run fine and there's quite an active club for these cars too the panard clubs you know most people never heard of but uh parts are available there's a guy who races one of these uh he shows up at beverly here with a double beach of the historic races he calls his car the aardvark and it has the running gear for one of these and that thing beats everybody it just takes them into turns and handles i gotta find out who that guy is i mean i'm pretty good size and i fit this thing comfortably above four grand it really comes alive i love the thinking i like how the brake drums are on the outside to caught them and they're fin to keep them cool so the brakes don't overheat i keep calling it a bt24 but technically it's a 24bp but i already put the letters first i still got a little bit of work to do to it carburation is close to spot on but not quite we got a carburetor rebuild kit coming from france but it's nice being air cooled you just don't have the problems you get sometimes when you find an old water cooled car where the especially when they're aluminum and you know the water is just eating out the cylinders or the intakes or any of that you know these all came new with michelin's on them from the factory just the mechanicalness of this engine intrigues me with the torsion bars and uh the air cooling the hemi head the roller bearing crank even the connecting rods are on roller bearings you've got two sets of rollers one big one small it's just fascinating the engineering i did this thing you know they could have made just a big flathead engine you know but they didn't they made something extremely sophisticated and and and fun to drive the engine just feels so lively it just loves to work hard so you don't mind beating on it you're just driving your foot to the floor all the time and when you take people for ride and the spawner says 150 they go wow goes 150 yeah we're 150 right now kilometers this engine loves to rev what am i about 4500 rpm doing 115 kilometers but not too bad the tires last forever your brakes last a long time you're only stopping 1800 pounds and if you really baby this thing you can get as much as 47 miles per gallon you know the simplicity of air-cooled cars is really wonderful you can't really have them anymore because of emissions and whatnot you know the clearance is uh a new engine temperature much tighter you can't allow exhaust gases and things to escape but it's just nice just one less thing less thing to leak you know water pumps and radiators and hoses and all of that but isn't that exhaust pipe motor mount just fascinating they use the exhaust pipe as a motor mount and you know when that rubber side steering just replace it as you would any motor mount but it's just sort of funny to me who thinks of that and it works fine another really unusual feature although we disconnected it under the steering wheel you have a a knob you pull out and it disconnects the battery it comes like that from the factory and uh it kept shorting out on us i don't know why it would smoke it catch fire uh okay we ran the ground wire it just i said you know something let's just take it out and put in a regular knife switch on off switch under the hood and that's what we did but that was kind of interesting i guess that was like a safety thing or an anti-theft deal i mean you pull it out and it would snap back but battery disconnected then you got this weird thing in the center of the dash here it's got a little car on it and you flip it and it uh i think it directs the ventilation either to the windshield wherever you want it to go and the heater works on this very well which is interesting for an air cooled car [Music] kind of wonder how light this thing could be if it was carbon fiber it's got a lot of aluminum in it but also a lot of steel bernards were hugely popular in france they sold quite a few of these they just never marketed much to the american market because they didn't care about it i guess peugeot was all set to come back to the american market but then i don't know they changed their mind i don't know what happened there that's another great french car you look at that early uh was it 1913 bucho that ran in indianapolis hemi heads overhead cam four valves a very sophisticated motor to this day it still is if i'm not mistaken i think it ran in 1913 and then qualified in the 1948 race something like that pretty amazing i just like this engine because it's streaming its heart out and you're not damaging it you know you can't really do that so much with it well i guess you could with american engines but it's just designed that way which is what i love using all 56 foot pounds of torque there boy anyway i know these odd little cars like this don't do as well as the lamborghinis and the corvettes and all the fancy cars but you know they're a lot of fun and it's a piece of history and it's just fun to share i hope you enjoy watching these as much as i like making them and uh we'll see you guys next week with uh hopefully something more strange well probably not as strange as this but well i just have to wait and see see you then thanks everybody [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 283,207

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Panhard, Quinn Martin, French car, France, systeme Panhard, Panhard rod, two cylinder, flat-twin, unusual cars, rare cars, weird cars, car porn, car enthusiast, gearhead, car guy, technology, automotive, Paul Panhard

Id: C8sqJrUjmFU

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Idaho_Brotato]

French cars are amazing. You can tell that the French have an absolutely unique worldview by the way they do things. Their cars are like an entirely different line of parallel evolution - they do the same things that cars do everywhere, but the solutions they find are unique.

[u/verdegrrl]

More info: https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/against-all-odds-1967-panhard-24-bt