1929 Minerva Type AM

The Minerva Company is the most famous of Belgian automotive marques and one of the first in the world to outfit their vehicles with Knight-type sleeve valve engines. This configuration did away with the conventional poppet valves, and instead, a sleeve was placed between the piston and the cylinder wall and slid up and down in a synchronized movement. This allowed ports in the sides of the sleeves to align with the exhaust and inlet ports of the cylinders at the correct moments. The Sleeve Valves flaw was its high oil consumption and smoky exhaust. However, it improved the longevity of the engine, volumetric efficiency, smoothness and silence. Vehicles produced by Minerva after 1910 were powered exclusively by the Knight sleeve-valve engine, which had been named after the American inventor of the design, Charles Yale Knight.

Minerva survived World War I and entered the post-war market in 1919. They brought with them new models that featured technological advances developed during the War. The first model was the 20 CV four, followed by a 5.3-liter 30 CV six. Production continued to climb until it reached 2,500 in 1925, followed by a peak of 3,000 chassis in 1926. In 1927, the six-cylinder, 100-horsepower, 6-liter Type AK was introduced. This was quickly followed by the Type AL, with a larger 6.6-liter engine, and the AM which had several important technical modifications. The AM rested on a 149.5-inch wheelbase which rivaled the largest and finest cars of the era. The factory bodies were often conservative and in the United States, some Minerva chassis received coachwork from the Walter M. Murphy Company. Murphy's coachwork on the Minerva Type AM and AM chassis included their famed Clear Vision convertible sedans, convertible coupes, phaetons, and town cars.

by Daniel Vaughan | Jul 2018