> This month's issue of ACtion (A.C. Owners Club newsletter) contains
> several excerpts from articles found in back issues of the journal MOTOR
> SPORT describing various AC cars produced between 1904 and the mid
> 1950s. In them several references are made to term cwt. This is a
> weight measurement which is apparently an abbreviation for hundredweight
> (or perhaps avoirdupois?). According to the dictionary this is either
> 100 pounds or 112 pounds. Does anyone know which value would be correct
> for this time frame?
cwt is in fact the abbreviation for hundredweight (c for centi-). 112
pounds it is, or 8 stone (14 lb per stone). Thus a 19cwt car weighs
2128 lb, or 967.27 kg.
Just don't ask about a conversion between RAC hp and brake hp... there
isn't one. The RAC horsepower calculation was purely based on bore size
times cylinders, on the assumption that the Bloody Rich Bastards who could
afford motors with lots of big cylinders should pay lots of taxes, while
the chap who has a Morris Eight couldn't afford to pay as much. This is
why British motors typically have pistons that look like thimbles and
cylinders that look like shotguns.
--Scott
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