To me, the Autolite inline, as well as the Kendig/Predator, and some other "new thinking" designs at the time, like the 4 2 barrel "Man A Fre" setup, were brought out to "build a better mouse trap", but after all these years, the conventional Holley carb is pretty tough to beat. We have a local fella in his early 80s, that is still drag racing the same 31 Model A that he has had since 1967, with a SB Chevy. He still has the same Man A Fre that he bought new, similar to the Man A Fre on the Milner Coupe in American Graffiti. He used it years ago, but when he built the current engine, he dynoed the new engine, with both his Brodix single 4 barrel single plane intake and Holley 750, and the old Man A Fre, and the Man A Fre, with it`s 4 Rochester 2GC 2 barrel carbs, was down by just over 100 HP. In the 80s, I tried a Predator on my 70 428 4 speed 70 Mach 1, that ran mid 12s back then, and compared to the Holley 780 Vacuum secondary, I did get the Predator to run almost as quick at the dragstrip, but didn`t much car for it`s part throttle response and drivability. I have seen, but never used an Autolite Inline 4 barrel, or seen one apart, but have no idea if all 4 throttle plates were connected, so they all opened together, or were staged, but with a separate accelerator pump for each bore, have to think that they would be pretty thirsty. I imagine that the idea behind the inline was for use with a plenumless, individual runner intake manifold, for use with 2 carbs, so a barrel for each cylinder, kinda like a 4 Weber setup, and used modified style intake to use a single inline. Wonder if each barrel had it`s own float chamber and float, it`s own idle circuit, and vacuum style of part throttle enrichment (think power valve). Very interesting experiment, and would certainly look cool hanging on your wall, but between trying to make it work well, and getting replacement gaskets and parts, probably best left to look at, on display.