Tethered car and hydro photo album

Owing to the break up of an extensive collection of Oliver items last year, we have had the unprecedented opportunity to photograph a number of these before being sold and dispersed. Other photos are from our contributors or our archives.


Nine Port or 'Two Five'	Early Nine Port/Jaguar with modified intake


Battleaxe	Something of a mystery at present, a one off perhaps?

The first purpose designed car unit was hurriedly built in just a few days for the Anglo Swedish exchange visit to Sweden in 1949. It was installed in an existing car called 'Busy', still using U bolts to hold it into the chassis and so successful during the two events there that it led to dozens of orders. It never went into production though but became the catalyst for the DV and RV models.


Jaguar with relieved crankcase	Rotary valve RV, first of the production models

The first production car motor was the disc valve induction DV seen below. It incorporated the mounting foot common to all the later Oliver twinshafts. It is believed that only seven of these were ever built, with only one still known to exist. The change was soon made to shaft rotary induction being termed the RV. These had the venturi still on the right of the car with the cars being designed around this feature. Oliver was asked if he could produce a ball raced version, which became the RVB. The story goes that at a meeting where Oliver won, the guest was Speedway Rider 'Tiger' Stephenson and following a conversation the engines took on the 'Tiger' name, so the name stuck for those and subsequent motors as well as some of the cars with the RV and RVB being referred to as Tiger MkIs.


First twinshaft with a mounting foot, the disc valve DV


Ball raced rotary valve motor the RVB	Factory series I 'Tiger Two-Five'

Relatively few RV and RVB models were sold before Oliver produced an updated version, still designated RVB but now the Tiger MkII. The redesign had an entirely new cylinder and liner assembly, and more obviously, the venturi moved to the left hand side. This did cause some difficulties as the cast in mounts for the sneaker were on the right hand side of the castings and moving the tank to the left hand side of the care compromised the fuel feed badly. To overcome this the 'curly carb' was developed to allow better tank positioning and fuel feed.


Original series I 'Two-Five' with RV motor	Series II Tiger Cub (Bottom's Up) with Curly carb RVB MkII


Factory supplied Mercedes with original cycle tube decal	Tiger RVB MKII, 'curly carb' venturi

At the 1954 European Championships Oliver dominated the 1.5cc class with every entry Oliver powered. In the 2.5cc class, five of the top six were Oliver powered with one SuperTigre creeping in. Change was also afoot with the castings as the twin legged wire bridle was being abandoned in favour of the single, steel, pan handle. This required new castings with the bridle mount cast in as seen below on Ron Thrower's 'Bottom's Up' that was second at the 54EC. A change in rules also required that the new castings did not have an exhaust vent in the bottom of the pan.


Ron Thrower's 2.5cc car Silver medal in 1954	Ron's GRP car from 1957
Both these cars are still in existence and have been run successfully at Buckminster with no changes since last run in the 50s

By the mid 1950s The Tiger twinshaft was requiring ever smaller tyres to keep the motor in the optimum rev range. The Raylite style wheels could not go any smaller and there was also a serious problem with lack of ground clearance, which led to the almost universal adoption of the Tiger aero engine in either spur or bevel drive configuration to allow a much wider selection of tyres to be used, as well as the opportunity to change gear ratios. Oliver did produce a prototype motor with an integral gear drive and a foot mounting but that was overtaken by numerous competitors with their own ideas, notably Stan Drayson, double European Champion with an Ian Moore bevel drive car, Ken Procter and multiple World and European Champion, Roland Salomon with spur drive cars.


Package From Oliver sent to Jack Hadlow Non legal castings	Prototype integral gear unit, reverse rotation motor.

Two alternatives for spur mounting, bar stock Roland Salomon 'Killer' and a casting from Ken Procter described in ModelMaker


The Roland Salomon 'Killer' layout	Ken Procter's spur drive Oliver