User:Geworkdocs/Wege Motor Car Company

In 1920, William Wege, a 29-year-old mechanic from Peterborough, South Australia, designed and built a valveless petrol engine. It operated on what he called the two-cycle principle. The Wege engine had no push rods, timing wheels, cams or camshafts. Charges compressed in the lower portion of each cylinder were transferred to the upper part of the next cylinder, where they were fired. The moving parts in this engine consisted only of the crankshaft, pistons, and connecting rods.

Wege claimed that, compared with the normal four-cylinder engine, about one-third less of the parts were used. This lowered the cost of production as the machining operations necessary were 81 as against 250 (approximately) in the contemporary four stroke type.

Wege designed a three-cylinder and a six-cylinder engine. The six-cylinder was shown at South Australia’s first Automotive Show in 1920. Wege Motors Ltd was formed to exploit the invention, and Wege took it to England, where he had a chassis and body built for it. The prototype was road tested and much favourable publicity followed but plans to mass produce Wege cars in Adelaide, and later Sydney, never came to fruition.

The company was liquidated in January 1927.