{"id":66909,"date":"2021-04-09T08:41:01","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T08:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.secret-classics.com\/?p=66909"},"modified":"2021-04-21T06:47:13","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T06:47:13","slug":"laurin-klement-rkm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.secret-classics.com\/en\/laurin-klement-rkm\/","title":{"rendered":"Laurin & Klement RK\/M"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After Alexander ‘Sascha’ Count Kolowrat-Krakowsky had achieved his first motorsport successes with his Laurin & Klement Type F and the FC racing car, he remained loyal to the Czech brand. In the course of time, he commissioned various vehicles. Among them was the RK\/M of 1921. But in order to present this model we have to start a few years earlier. In Reichenberg (today Liberec) the car brand RAF (Reichenberg Automobil Fabrik) was located under the management of Baron Theodor von Liebieg. He was one of the very first car owners in Europe, as he purchased an early three-wheeled vehicle from Carl Benz and drove the long distance back to Reichenberg himself. From 1907, he manufactured luxurious cars himself. However, he hadn’t reckoned with the high manufacturing costs. Since he also sat on the board of Laurin & Klement at that time, he decided to agree to the merger of the two companies in 1912.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the RAF 18\/50 HP to the L&K RK<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Baron von Liebieg brought the license to build valveless slide valve engines into this merger. He had acquired this shortly before from Daimler, where these engines had gont into series production, known as Knight principle and considered to be groundbreaking. Laurin & Klement incorporated the RAF 18\/50 HP luxury Landaulet, which had been developed for this engine technology, almost unchanged into its model range and renamed it RK (R<\/strong>AF-K<\/strong>night). By 1915, 116 examples had been built. One of them was produced for Count Kolowrat-Krakowsky in 1913 as a racing car. Under the hood was a 4.7-liter four-cylinder slide engine with 37 kW\/50 hp. Power was transmitted to the rear axle via a multi-plate clutch and a four-speed gearbox. Braking was via a rear-wheel hand brake and two foot brakes. These acted on the torque transmission in front of and behind the gearbox. For the chassis, Baron von Liebieg relied on longitudinally mounted semi-elliptical leaf springs and a screw spindle steering.<\/p>\n\n\n

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