Stearns Knight J-8-90 Seven Passenger Touring
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Car producer : |
Stearns Knight |
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Model: |
J-8-90 Seven Passenger Touring |
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Year: |
1927-1929 |
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Type: |
Tourer |
Stearns-Knight was an American luxury automobile produced in Cleveland, Ohio first by the F.B. Stearns Company from 1900 to 1925, and then under ownership by WillysOverland Company of Toledo, Ohio until 1929.
Frank Ballou Stearns left school at age 14 in 1893 in his freshman year at the Case School of Applied Science. Sterns became the first American automobile to use the sleeve valve Knight Engine in its vehicles in 1911. The company was sold in 1925 to John North Willys who maintained it as a non-integrated affiliate of WillysOverland.
Production of the Stearns-Knight ended on December 20, 1929.
The Knight engine was complex but remarkably smooth and silent. In its ultimate Stearns iteration, the J-8-90 of 1928-29, it produced 112 quiet hp from 385 cu. in., and was mounted on an incredibly overbuilt, partially boxed frame with superbly constructed coachwork. The result, in its quality and engineering, was every bit the equal of a Packard or Lincoln of the time. In two years, just 388 of the J-8-90 were manufactured.
