Automobile manufacturer

Arturo Elizalde Rouvier opened a garage

Automobile repair shop

An automobile repair shop is a place where automobiles are repaired by auto mechanics and electricians.- Types :The automotive garage can be divided in so many category....

 in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 in 1909, and used it to manufacture automobile parts. He and his brother-in-law, Rafael Biada Navarro, were co-managers of the company they had formed with J. M. Vallet y Arnau, under the name "Sociedad Mercantil J. M. Vallet y Cia". Vallet provided the company with a workshop at 149 Paseo de San Juan in Barcelona.

Elizalde soon received backing from the Biada brothers, who began building complete cars. The first prototype, called the Tipo 11, made its debut in July 1914. It covered the route between Barcelona, Zaragoza

Zaragoza

Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...

, Guadalajara

Guadalajara, Spain

Guadalajara is a city and municipality in the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha, Spain, and in the natural region of La Alcarria. It is the capital of the province of Guadalajara. It is located roughly 60 km northeast of Madrid on the Henares River, and has a population of 83,789...

 and Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 in 13 hours. By 1915, Alfonso XIII owned a 20cv Biada-Elizalde cabriolet Tipo 20. A 25cv sports

Sports car

A sports car is a small, usually two seat, two door automobile designed for high speed driving and maneuverability....

 version of the same car was marketed, with Alfonso's blessing, as the Reine Victoria. It was claimed to be the first Spanish automobile to feature four-wheel brake

Brake

A brake is a mechanical device which inhibits motion. Its opposite component is a clutch. The rest of this article is dedicated to various types of vehicular brakes....

s. The Reine Victoria was first shown at the Salón del Automóvil de Barcelona of 1919. In 1920, the company announced production of a 19/30 cv model, the Model 29; it would have an ohv 3817 cc four-cylinder engine

Engine

An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert energy into useful mechanical motion. Heat engines, including internal combustion engines and external combustion engines burn a fuel to create heat which is then used to create motion...

. Similar models would be built until 1927.

Elizalde caused a sensation in 1920, by beginning production of a 50/60cv straight-eight known as the Tipo 48 - one of the first cars in this configuration to go into production. Its 8143 cc power unit had four valves per cylinder and incorporated a tire pump. This pump doubled as a vacuum cleaner

Vacuum cleaner

A vacuum cleaner, commonly referred to as a "vacuum," is a device that uses an air pump to create a partial vacuum to suck up dust and dirt, usually from floors, and optionally from other surfaces as well. The dirt is collected by either a dustbag or a cyclone for later disposal...

 to be used on the car's interior. A 5181 cc straight-eight Gran Sport version of this model, capable of reaching 160 kilometre per hour, was also offered.

In addition to producing cars, Elizalde built trucks and aircraft engines.

Aero engines

From 1925 the company produced aero-engines initially French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 Lorraine engines under licence and just prior to the outbreak of the civil war it produced two types of air-cooled engine the Dragon IX and Super-Dragon.

Aero engine designs

• Elizalde Dragon IX
• Elizalde Super-Dragon
• Elizalde Tigre IV
  Elizalde Tigre IV
  |-See also:-Bibliography:* Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War II. London. Studio Editions Ltd, 1998. ISBN 0-517-67964-7* Gunston, Bill. World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines. Cambridge, England. Patrick Stephens Limited, 1989. ISBN 1-85260-163-9...
  
   (four-cylinder in-line air-cooled)
  • Tigre IVA - 125 hp
  • Tigre IVB - 150 hp
• Elizalde Sirio S-VII-A (450hp seven-cylinder radial air-cooled)

External links

• ELIZALDE - babelfish translation of this article into English from Spanish.
• (ELIZALDE) Barcelona - babelfish translation of this article into English from Russian.