5 minute read
The early motor cars
Mary Mills
A couple of weeks ago I asked if anybody could guess which vehicle was made in the greatest numbers locally.
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I only had a couple of replies - one of them was John Willett, in Canada, who thought it was Merryweather fire engines. He could well be right - I don’t know how many motorised fire engines and similar vehicles Merryweather’s made. But last week I wrote about a couple of vehicles made in large numbers which I thought – correctly –nobody would think of. One was the Centurion tank made in the Royal Arsenal and also a road vehicle also made in the Arsenal known as the ‘Humber Pig. I also don’t rule out that there were other vehicles made on the Arsenal site – and at the very least development work was done on many vehicles manufactured elsewhere. An amoured car called ‘The Bulldog’ has been mentioned to me.
I suspect though that the largest numbers of vehicles made were Matchless bikes. I don’t know how many motorbikes they made but I really think that Matchless would have had the biggest output – their bikes must have been made in their thousands and thousands.
The other person who made a guess about which vehicles were made in Greenwich in any numbers was Scott Barrett, who told me about two vehicles I was not aware of. One of these was the Duocar, Duo/De P/Depford (sic) built in Deptford, but probably not in very big numbers. He said they were made in Deptford but wasn’t sure where the Greenwich boundary was. He’s right, they were not made in Greenwich. Both of the two addresses where the company apparently made their cars are in the Lewisham bit of Deptford. They seem to have begun in Alpha Street which is one of the roads off New Cross Road to the south. Later they were at 2 Evelyn Street – which is right at the Rotherhithe end of the street; where the MacDonald’s is now on the site of thr old Molins’ factory. They were however an interesting company and there are a number of websites giving a lot of detail about the work they did.
Duocars Ltd were founded in 1910 and were in Alpha Street. The company was founded by Louis de Peyrecave who seems to have had a career as an expert on gas engines, and in any case was an engineer of some importance.
‘ Duo car’ as a phrase usually referred to two seater cycle cars. Peyrecave’s vehicle was powered by a JAP engine. He later launched the “De P” range of light cars which had a variety of four cylinder engines. They were made at the factory at 2 Evelyn Street. It had a pressed steel frame and included a hood, screen, two side and one rear lamp as well as a set of tools. It cost 125 guineas for a water-cooled version and 120 guineas for the air-cooled one. By 1914 they were offering a tourer and a sports model. They also sold a light car costing £198 for a sports model and £230 for a coupé. I have no idea how many they sold, if any.
The other car which Scott Barrett mentions is a puzzle which I can’t solve and would probably like more information. Lewis Cars were in Abbey Wood and Scott says they were only built for a year or so - 1923-24. I can find nothing out about them except that they were made by Abbey Industries who were otherwise deeply involved in making parts for wireless sets and similar equipment. They were in Harrow Manor Way on the borders of, or perhaps part of, what had been the Kings Norton Ammunition factory.
In the Sheffield Telegraph of September 1922 I find the following advertisement “Astonishing Bargains -10-11. “Lewis Car, electric light, det. wheels and spare, complete: 2- seater body, hood, screen, and full equipment; £199.” But there is no information about its manufacture.
Around that time a ‘Lewis Car’ seems to have been made in Coventry by a company called the ‘Lewis Ordnance Company of London’ and there is a great deal of detail about it in some advertisements and an article describes the car and its manufacture and the exact location in Coventry of the factory. It is far from clear to me why this newly set up company was calling itself an ‘ordnance’ company when they were making cars -that sounds to be much more like Woolwich than Coventry.
And what if anything was made in Abbey Wood? Somebody who knows about this, please explain?
There was also a Lewis Car made in Adelaide, Australia around the same time, by the way.
Matchless not only made motorcycles but also produced a few cars in the early 1920s. Between 1923 and 1925 they made the K Series Light Tourer. That had a front mounted flat-twin engine of 1249cc. a three-speed gearbox, and four-wheel braking. It cost £225. What is said to be the only one remaining model was for sale in 2012 for £15,000 -- which is a lot less than the prices that some of their second hand motorcycles fetch. It was said that the Matchless car was ‘very much better engineered than the incoming Austin Seven’ – but the Austin was more popular because ir was much cheaper.
While writing about Matchless I should mention something which I should brought up the other week when I was writing about their motorcycles. This is their supply of motorcycles to the British Army in the Second World War. Most popular was the Matchless G3, a relatively lightweight and sporty 350cc model from 1941. By the time hostilities ceased in 1945, more than 63,000 G3Ls were made, and post-war they continued to be sold as a trials bike.
I have also been asked to say that it is not true Matchless made special clothing for motor cyclists - something I put in the article I did on Matchless, in good faith having seen it in a work on the subject. However Bill Cakebread, the specialist historian on Matchless, says that this was a mistake owing to advertising by a clothing company who had ‘photoshopped old Matchless catalogues to look like period advertisements’.
Most of the companies I have mentioned above made tiny numbers of vehicles, some of them back in the 1900s and 1920s. I’d like to bring us up to date – or at least to the 1960s and to a small vehicle made in the back streets of a residential area of Greenwich.
These cars were made in a small area behind the houses in Calvert Road just off Trafalgar Road and near the Greenwich Centre. This company had originally been Heron Plastics of Greenwich, who were the manufacturer of Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP) body shells for the Austin 7 chassis.6. Dennis Bishop, the owner, made cars using the plastics technology, and with a Ford engine. He began in 1960 and later produced about 12 models, called the Europa. They were available in ‘fully-trimmed component form’ for £580 or in partly constructed form for £730. A review reproduced on the web raves about this little car –‘‘for sheer joy of driving, the Heron Europa would take some beating’. I see that our correspondent Scott Barrett has a web page about them – Scott, please tell us more!
