AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2013 - 16

WAYPOINTS

A colorful life

BY THOMAS B. HAINES
Editor in Chief

Plug sparks a search through history

TOM HAINES

recently helped
work on the
annual inspection
for his Beechcraft
Bonanza A36.

16 | AOPA PILOT April 2013

ASSISTING WITH THE ANNUAL INSPECTION on my
Bonanza (OK, mostly getting in the way), I was busy
gapping and then cleaning the spark plugs when I began
to wonder how this small electrode—that over its lifetime will spark perhaps millions of times, resulting in
the burning of thousands of gallons of avgas—came
about. The spark plug I was holding was made by
Champion Aerospace, which makes more aviation spark
plugs than any company and was the first to introduce a
line of spark plugs manufactured especially for aviation.
In the early days, automotive spark plugs were used.
The device has a complicated, intriguing history
that includes bad partnerships, international relations,
fast cars and boats, woman problems, and possibly even
murder. If this was happening now, rather than in the
early 1900s, we’d be seeing it on Dateline.
Like many iconic companies, especially in aviation, this one is named after an entrepreneur looking
to improve on something that already existed. The
invention of the spark plug is attributed to several individuals, but a Frenchman named Albert C. Champion
gets the credit for first mass-producing the product that
most resembles today’s spark plugs. Like the Wright
brothers, Champion was into bicycles. But rather than
building them, he raced them in France and ultimately
the United States. Liking fast things, he soon was racing boats and cars. Injured in a New York boat accident,
he returned to France to convalesce and while there
immersed himself in the study of magnetos and electrical components for cars.
He returned to the United States in 1905 and
opened a factory in Boston to manufacture spark plugs
and sell imported magnetos. Numerous sources attribute his success to the clay insulators he perfected that
improved the performance of his plugs—the insulators made from clay he imported from France. Today’s
spark plugs similarly use ceramic insulators to protect
the center electrode from grounding.
Champion became friends and a business partner
with William C. Durant, the founder of General Motors,
and soon was making all the spark plugs for the burgeoning automotive manufacturer in a Flint, Michigan,
business funded by Durant called Champion Ignition
Company. By 1922, the name had been changed to AC
Spark Plug Company (using the founder’s initials) to
avoid confusion with Champion Spark Plug Company of
Toledo, Ohio. As with many other entrepreneurs (such

as Bill Lear and William T. Piper), Champion had lost
control of his own name thanks to a series of early mergers, acquisitions, and business dealings.
Before partnering with Durant, Champion had
partnered with three brothers named Stranahan. The
Stranahans had underwritten much of Champion’s early
work. When he moved his allegiance to Durant, the
Stranahans kept his original company—with his name
on it—going strong. Ultimately the Stranahans sued GM
over the name, forcing the name change in 1922.
The GM division of AC Spark Plug, again through
numerous mergers, eventually morphed into AC Delco,
which today has evolved further into a separate company called Delphi, supplying electrical and other
components to automotive manufacturers. Champion
Spark Plug was bought and sold numerous times and
ultimately moved from Toledo to South Carolina. More
mergers and acquisitions later, the company became
known as Champion Aerospace, which today makes all
sorts of aviation electrical components, including Slick
magnetos, spark plugs, igniters and exciters for turbine
engines, ignition harnesses, tools, and oil filters.
Again, like so many industrial entrepreneurs, Albert
Champion’s colorful life was not confined to the boardroom or manufacturing floor.
Charles Lindbergh chose Champion spark plugs for
the Spirit of St. Louis. A few months after Lindbergh’s
nonstop solo Atlantic crossing to Paris, Champion
and his wife were vacationing in Paris and basking
in the afterglow of Lindbergh’s success. While there,
Champion died at age 49. Some reports say it was from a
pulmonary embolism. Others suggest Champion’s death
was no accident. Instead, they attribute the embolism
to Champion being punched in the face by an ex-prize
fighter who was romantically involved with the sparkplug developer’s wife.
So think of that the next time you are tooling along
at 8,000 feet with a dozen Champion spark plugs firing
rhythmically out in front of you. All those sparks evolved
from the fertile mind of Albert Champion, who led a
life curious enough that it might make a good primetime mini-series. For me, it’s back to more cleaning and
gapping of plugs. Only five more to go.
AOPA
EMAIL thomas.haines@aopa.org

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2013

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