Friday 21st March 1947
Earl S MacPherson applied for a United States patent for his vehicle wheel suspension system. The MacPherson strut uses a wishbone, or a substantial compression link stabilized by a secondary link, which provides a bottom mounting point for the hub carrier or axle of the wheel. This lower arm system provides both lateral and longitudinal location of the wheel. The upper part of the hub carrier is rigidly fixed to the bottom of the outer part of the strut proper; this slides up and down the inner part of it, which extends upwards directly to a mounting in the body shell of the vehicle. The line from the strut’s top mount to the bottom ball joint on the control arm gives the steering axis inclination. The strut’s axis may be angled inwards from the steering axis at the bottom, to clear the tyre; this makes the bottom follow an arc when steering.
To be really successful, the MacPherson strut required the introduction of unitary construction, because it needs a substantial vertical space and a strong top mount, which unibodies can provide, while benefiting them by distributing stresses. The strut will usually carry both the coil spring on which the body is suspended and the shock absorber, which is usually in the form of a cartridge mounted within the strut. The strut can also have the steering arm built into the lower outer portion. The whole assembly is very simple and can be preassembled into a unit; also by eliminating the upper control arm, it allows for more width in the engine compartment, which is useful for smaller cars, particularly with transverse-mounted engines such as most front wheel drive vehicles have. It can be further simplified, if needed, by substituting an anti-roll bar (torsion bar) for the radius arm. For those reasons, it has become almost ubiquitous with low cost manufacturers. Furthermore, it offers an easy method to set suspension geometry.
Many modern implementations replace the lower control arm by a wishbone. An anti-roll bar is optional and if present is attached by a ball-jointed rod to the spring-damper or by a ball or elastomerically jointed rod to the wishbone.
