page_title: Abner Doble
section_title: Consultancy and later life
hierarchical_section_title: Abner Doble / Consultancy and later life
caption_attribution_description: English: 1953 Paxton Phoenix dream car made by Robert Paxton McCulloch
context_page_description: Abner Doble was an American mechanical engineer who built and sold steam-powered automobiles as Doble Steam Cars. His steam engine design was used in various automobiles from the early 1900s, including a 1969 General Motors prototype and the first successful steam-powered aeroplane.
context_section_description: With the demise of their company Abner and Warren went on to work as consultants for other engineering companies globally. During the 1920s and 1930s engines were developed for steam buses. The first were tested in 1926 by International Harvester, using a Doble Model G engine, and the Detroit Motorbus Co, in a double decker, with a Doble Model H engine. A second Detroit bus had a Doble steam engine added in 1927 and at least one of them covered some 32,000 miles (51,000 km). In 1929 a Doble Model H was installed in a Yellow Coach for General Motors. This was followed by another Model F in a Fageol bus.
  He went to New Zealand in March 1930 where he worked under a 3 year contract for A. & G. Price Limited at Thames on the development of a steam engine for buses. One was installed on an AEC chassis for the Auckland Transport Board to trial. The intention was that should the trial be successful more would be constructed. By 1932 the first had covered more than 20,000 miles (32,000 km) and a second was ordered by a private company, White and Sons, for their Auckland to Thames Service.
  In January 1932 Doble left New Zealand and went via San Francisco to England. There he was loaned by Prices as a consultant to the Sentinel Waggon Works of Shrewsbury, working on steam lorries and locomotives. Several shunting locomotives (switchers) and an undetermined number of railcars were fitted with Doble/Sentinel machinery for sale to customers in Britain, France, Peru, and Paraguay. In Germany, during the 1930s Henschel & Sohn buses and trucks, powered by Doble designed steam engines, were operated. Abner Doble left England in 1936. Also during this time he acted as a consultant to Borsig Lokomotiv-Werke of Berlin.
  Doble was hired as the chief engineer for a new bus powerplant for a revived Stanley Motor Carriage Company in Chicago. In the middle of the project after the powerplant was actually built, Doble left to some annoyance. Doble then did engine designs for Cleaver-Brooks, Nordberg (1946-1948), and Greyhound. After this he retired to Santa Rosa, California, where he sold Electrolux vacuum cleaners to pay his living expenses.
  Doble's consultancy also included in the development of the Paxton Phoenix car, for the Paxton Engineering Division of McCulloch Motors Corporation, Los Angeles. The project was for a low-weight car built around a unique "torque box" chassis similar to an aeronautical wing section. The project was eventually dropped in 1954. He did work on a design for a steam car for Alex Moulton of England, but it was never built. He was a consultant on the Keen steam car in 1957 and a monotube boiler for Charles W Tadlock of St Louis in 1957.
  For the remainder of his life, he maintained that steam-powered automobiles were at least equal to gasoline cars, if not superior. He died on 17 July 1961 of a heart attack, in Santa Rosa, California.
  He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1972.
caption: Paxton Phoenix
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