Four cylinders were made in the early 1920s by manufacturers such as ACE, India, Excelsior, Henderson, Pierce and Cleveland in the USA, as well as in Europe by Nimbus in Denmark, Ariel and Matchless in the UK, and the first manufacturer, FN in Belgium. And those first four-cylinders from FN were even produced with shaft drive! Although there were four-cylinder engines before the FN already, none resembled the four-cylinder inline engine of the smooth and usable FN.
Its sublime design, like any good design, was copied, and so the American Pierce Four used the same inline engine with shaft drive. The story goes that Pierce-Arrow’s Percy Pierce took home a 1908 FN Four from Europe, disassembled it and then scrutinised all the parts and design. It is therefore unsurprising and…
