A book called ‘Cool Mavericks’ reveals for the first time how colourful characters fired with gold-rush zeal worked out how to air condition every car ever made, leaving the top car makers out of the game for almost half a century.

How it all started

The buyers of the vast majority of air conditioned Australian cars from the 1960s to the 1990s had their aircon fitted, not by the new car dealership but by an independent, private installer around the corner. It wasn’t until almost the turn of the century that air conditioning became the default accessory in every vehicle on the assembly line.

Large private aftermarket innovators emerged in Australia to design and make the systems used in Australian-made and assembled cars. Many of the design standards and purpose-built machinery conceived by these companies are still being used by OEM suppliers today, but, like the car makers, most have left Australian shores.

In the hot states of America and Australia, it led to an exciting, innovative and lucrative period for those workshops that took a punt and started building and installing air conditioning in all kinds of mobile vehicles, including trains, tractors, boats and troop carriers.

A living history of the industry

Industry leaders say Cool Mavericks is the first attempt to give long-overdue credit to the real pioneers of mobile air conditioning, an unsung sector of the vehicle aftermarket who defied all the odds and fired up an industry that was never anticipated and so never planned. The air conditioning systems devised by these entrepreneurs became the blueprint for all future mobile air conditioning.

The product of a ten-year research project in which more than a hundred pioneers in air conditioning were interviewed globally, Cool Mavericks exposes how mechanical tinkerers in often small, backyard workshops, took control of this opportunistic industry and dominated it throughout the second half of last century.

Authored by Unicla director and industry pioneer Mark Mitchell, and VASA’s CEO for its first 20 years, journalist Ken Newton, the weighty 700-page hardcover book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the Australian spirit of innovation and automotive history.

Innovations, inventions and engineering marvels

While Australia’s pioneer role in mobile air conditioning development dominates the book, many of its pages are devoted to the early patents and vital discoveries that needed to be made before a cooling system based on refrigeration would ever work in a moving vehicle.

For example, the early refrigerants used in the first waves of stationary refrigeration in America were so toxic that if used in a vehicle, one leak and everyone in the car would die – and rigid lines used to carry refrigerants in the vehicles of the 1950s and 1960s didn’t last on poor road surfaces. The physical componentry of air conditioning had to be thought out and patented.

Finally, somebody had to figure out how to stuff all this gear into a machine that was never designed to be mechanically air conditioned in the first place.

The ideas that stemmed from these challenges changed our industry and the world as we know it.  

A modern-day example of this is the original Tesla Model S electric vehicle. Elon Musk gets all the attention and accolades for it, and of course it is warranted. But Elon knows, and so does anyone intimate with the technology within this vehicle, that without the innovation and genius of a Cool Maverick – one Vince Johnston – the Model S wouldn’t be going anywhere. Vince invented and patented a water glycol circuit that switches twin and triple heat exchangers from parallel to series flow to maximise heating and cooling of the vehicle battery. It’s one of the secrets inside a Tesla.

A tribute to the larrikins who showed the world how to air condition anything on wheels

The car air conditioning industry in Australia, Japan and the USA was full of characters. There were larrikins, opportunists and true entrepreneurs, but all of them in their own way were explorers working with nothing more than an idea of how to cool the biggest variety of vehicles on the planet in one country, and most of them worked out of a tin shed.

The book acknowledges most of the Cool Mavericks mentioned have never received any recognition for their achievements… until now.

• There is the story of a young boy who was so poor at maths his mother cut up apples into squares on the kitchen table so he could grasp numbers and algebra sets. He went on to become one of the greatest air-conditioning engineers that ever lived.
• There is story of a young man who was so hell bent on solving leaking pipes on oil rigs and aircraft bombers that he ended up inventing the modern car air conditioning hose. This was the hose technology that propelled the Apollo missions into space.
• There is the story of the department store owner who established the global car AC industry.
• There is the story of the larrikin Melbourne taxi owner who started the industry here in Australia and air conditioned Queen Elizabeth’s car so she could stand the heat during her first visit to Australia.
• There is the story of the young lad who busked with his violin on the streets to take home dinner money to his mother. He became an engineering innovator and built a global brand like no other.

Looking to the future

The cooling of vehicles, people and places will be a gigantic endeavour for the Cool Mavericks of tomorrow.

The transport of people, food, and medicine under cooling technology is now part of everyday life. Finding the right mix of energy and low environmental impact to allow its continuation will be one the greatest challenges for mankind in the next 50 to 100 years.

It will be the Cool Mavericks of today and tomorrow who will do it, and our job will be to make sure we recognise them, and their achievements.