{{Third-party, date=March 2021 CorvetteC4-87

Paxton Automotive is a

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

-based manufacturer of

supercharger In an internal combustion engine, a supercharger compresses the intake gas, forcing more air into the engine in order to produce more power for a given displacement. The current categorisation is that a supercharger is a form of forced ind ...

s for automotive use. The company is the major proponent of the centrifugal type supercharger. Early products were offered under the McCulloch name. Some Paxton superchargers have been factory fitted, but most units sold have been aftermarket installed. Paxton products are possibly best known for their frequent use in performance-modified

Ford Mustang The Ford Mustang is a series of American automobiles manufactured by Ford. In continuous production since 1964, the Mustang is currently the longest-produced Ford car nameplate. Currently in its sixth generation, it is the fifth-best selli ...

s. Inventor Robert Paxton McCulloch began producing superchargers to his design in 1937 for the Ford Flathead V8, a popular engine for performance modification at the time. The company estimates that around 5,000 were built before World War II stopped production. Postwar, McCulloch developed a more sophisticated supercharger and began selling it in 1953. This was factory fitted to a number of vehicles at the time, including the Kaiser Manhattan, Packard Panther, Studebaker Golden Hawk, 1957

Packard Clipper The Packard Clipper is an automobile which was built by the Packard Motor Car Company (and by the later Studebaker-Packard Corporation) for model years 1941–1942, 1946–1947 and 1953–1957. For 1956 only, Clipper was classified as a stand-alo ...

and 1958 Packard Hawk. In 1956, McCulloch set up a separate Paxton Superchargers division, selling it off in 1958. Supercharged engines were used for one successful year in

NASCAR The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. The privately owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and ...

racing, after which forced induction was banned from the sport. For this purpose, Paxton superchargers were fitted as the rare (211 produced) F-option for the 1957

Ford Thunderbird The Ford Thunderbird (colloquially called the T-Bird) is a personal luxury car produced by Ford from model years 1955 until 1997 and 2002 until 2005 across 11 distinct generations. Introduced as a two-seat convertible, the Thunderbird was p ...

. A short run of

Shelby Mustang The Shelby Mustang is a high-performance variant of the Ford Mustang built by Shelby American from 1965 to 1967 and by the Ford Motor Company from 1968 to 1970. In 2005, Ford revived the Shelby nameplate for a high-performance model of the f ...

s were fitted with Paxton superchargers, and Ford dealers offered Paxton superchargers as a dealer-fitted

option from 1965 to 1972. Paxton still provides supercharger kits for older Mustangs as well as more recent models. Still in business as a subsidiary of Vortech, Paxton now supplies complete supercharging kits for popular performance-modified cars, as well as bare superchargers for more customised installations. One of the more unusual applications for the Paxton brand superchargers was as an air pump in the air purifying CO₂ scrubbers of U.S. Navy submarines.

External links

Paxton Automotive
Automotive companies of the United States

See also

External links