Back when I had dreams of building the CrosRod, one of the engines I envisioned powering the wee beastie was a Fageol flat-8 engine. Built as a boat motor when Fageol owned the rights to the Crosley four-cylinder in the late 1950s, Fageol simply took one regular block and one mirror-block (with the intake and exhaust on the opposite side of the block), then mated them together using a special crankcase and four special connecting rods.

I quickly discarded the idea when I realized that these engines are so rare, nobody I'd spoken with had ever seen one. Even if I wanted to find a mirror block (not as rare, but still rare) and build my own, I'd still need to have some ultra-specialized parts fabricated. But I remained enthralled with the idea, and thus was very delighted by Jim Bollman's selection for this month's Crosley of the Month on the Crosley Automobile Club's website: a genuine Fageol flat-8, owned by Mike Grimes out in California.

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