History
Henry Ford's Model T used a torque tube to restrain this force, for his differential was attached to the chassis by a lateral leaf spring and two narrow rods. The torque tube surrounded the true driveshaft and exerted the force to its ball joint at the extreme rear of the transmission, which was attached to the engine. A similar method was used by the late-1930s Buick and by Hudson's bathtub car of 1948, which used helical springs which could not take fore-and-aft thrust.
The Hotchkiss drive, invented by Albert Hotchkiss, was the most popular rear suspension system used in American cars from the 1930s to the 1970s. The system uses longitudinal leaf springs attached both forward and behind the differential of the live axle. These springs transmit the torque to the frame. Although scorned by many European car makers of the time, it was accepted by American car makers because it was inexpensive to manufacture. Also, the dynamic defects of this design were suppressed by the enormous weight of US passenger vehicles before implementation the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard.
Another Frenchman invented the De Dion tube, which is sometimes called "semi-independent". Like a true independent rear suspension, this employs two universal joints or their equivalent from the center of the differential to each wheel. But the wheels cannot entirely rise and fall independently of each other; they are tied by a yoke that goes around the differential, below and behind it. This method has had little use in the United States, though it does not evidence the Bump Steer that a more expensive, true independent suspension does. Its use around 1900 was probably due to the poor quality of {tires|tyres}, which wore out quickly. By removing a good deal of unsprung weight, as independent rear suspensions do, it made them last longer.
Rear wheel drive vehicles today frequently use a fairly complex fully independent, multi-link suspension to locate the rear wheels securely while providing decent ride quality.
Read more about this topic: Rear Suspension
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Attributed to Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)