The Birth of the British Motor Car 1769–1897: Volume 3 The Last Battle 1894–97

193 Pages·1982·22.807 MB·English

by  T. R. Nicholson (auth.)

THE BIRTH
OF THE
BRITISH MOTOR CAR
1769-1897
Volume 3
THE LAST BATTLE
1894-97
By the same author
A Toy for the Lion (Kimber)
Adventurer's Road (Cassell)
The Trailblazers (Cassell)
Five Roads to Danger (Cassell)
The Wild Roads (Jarrolds)
The Age of Motoring Adventure (Cassell)
Car Badges of the World (Cassell)
The Motor Book (Methuen)
The Second Motor Book (Methuen)
Automobile Treasurers (Ian Allan)
The World's Motor Museums (Dent)
European Cars 1886-1914 (Ian Allan)
The Vintage Car 1919-1930 (Batsford)
Sports Cars 1907-1927 (Blandford Press)
Sports Cars 1928-1939 (Blandford Press)
Passenger Cars 1863-1904 (Blandford Press)
Passenger Cars 1905-1912 (Blandford Press)
Passenger Cars 1913-1923 (Blandford Press)
Racing Cars and Record Breakers 1898-1921 (Blandford Press)
Sprint: Speed Hillclimbs and Speed Trials in Britain 1899-1925
(David & Charles)
Isotta-Fraschini: The Noble Pride of Italy (Ballantine)
Contributor to G.N. Georgano: The Complete Encyclopedia of Motor
Cars (Ebury Press)
THE BIRTH
OF THE
BRITISH MOTOR CAR
1769-1897
Volume 3
THE LAST BATTLE
1894-97
T. R. Nicholson
© T.R. Nicholson 1982
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1982 978-0-333-28563-3
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1982 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-05340-7 ISBN 978-1-349-05338-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05338-4
Volume 1 ISBN 978-0-333-23764-9
Volume 2 ISBN 978-0-333-28561-9
The set ISBN 978-0-333-32717-3
Contents
List of Plates vii
1 The New Contender, 1894-5 335
2 Prelude to Battle, 1895-6 385
3 The Battle Joined, 1896 407
4 Triumph and Anti-Climax, 1896-7 451
Conclusion: Why Recovery? 479
Notes 487
Select Bibliography 499
Index 1.1
List of Plates
1 Competitors in the Paris-Bordeaux race of 1895 (National Motor
Museum)
2 The Daimler range of products, 1896 (Daimler-Benz AG)
3 The Motor Mills, Coventry, about 1896-7 (National Motor
Museum)
4 De Dion Bouton tricycle (Michael Worthington-Williams)
5 On the way to the start of the London-Brighton run, 1896 (BBC
Hulton Picture Library)
6 The Offord Electrocar, 1896 (Science Museum)
7 Battery-electric bus of Radcliffe Ward, 1896 (London Transport)
8 Panhard-Levassor of pre-1895 type (National Motor Museum)
9 Prince Ranjitsinhji in a Coventry-built Daimler, 1897 (Michael
Worthington-Williams)
10 Cartoon showing Bersey taxicab, 1897 (Ann Ronan Picture
Library)
11 Promotional material to boost public confidence in the British
Motor Syndicate's shares and patents, 1897 (Science Museum)
12 Drawing from "Story of an Auto-Motor Car", 1896 (BBC Hulton
Picture Library)
13 Arnold of 1896 (Arnolds [Bran bridges] Ltd)
1
The New Contender, 1894-5
F
rom 1894 onwards, the new generation of motor cars began to
appear on Britain's roads. The earliest harbinger of the type most
representative of the latest arrivals-foreign-designed petrol vehicles
-was probably already in the country. At an unknown date, a Roger
Benz of 1888 type, now in the Science Museum, London, was imported
into Britain. It is of the first type offered for sale by Mannheim, and it is
unlikely that it would have been brought in after more advanced
models were made available in 1893. But there is no certainty of this,
so the place of this vehicle in history remains conjectural. Early in 1891
Frederick Simms planned to bring a car-presumably a Daimler-to
England, but did not do so. Alfred Harmsworth, the future Lord
Northcliffe, had ridden in a steamer at the 1889 Paris International
Exhibition, and in a petrol car in Paris in 1893. Though later an
enthusiastic owner-driver, he did not buy a car at this time. John
Henry Knight, too, visited Paris in 1893, and rode on a Serpollet
steamer. More notable altogether was a distinguished visitor to Bad
Homburg in the same year, to whom the French chocolate millionaire
Gaston Menier gave a ride in his Serpollet. The Prince of Wales had
shown interest in Rickett's steamers as a young man, and now had his
first recorded ride on a motor car.
As we have seen, a variety of indigenous electric vehicles, and also
Roots's kerosene tricycle, made their forays in this period, while the
Serpollet visiting Donkin's premises may have strayed into the
neighbouring Bermondsey streets. But as far as the up-and-coming
petrol car was concerned, Britons took their pleasures abroad. Sure
signs of a strong and general revival of interest in motor cars, and in
relieving them of their legal disabilities, began to appear only in 1894.
New British vehicles constituted one of these portents, if an
insignificant one. The most prominent were still propelled by
electricity, which is no surprise. They continued to be of all types,
private and public. Walter Bersey ran a parcels van in the City of
335
336 The Last Battle, 1894-97
London from early March 1894. It covered about 1000 miles in 11
months, earning good opinions from the press for its handiness, and
bad ones from crossing-sweepers, bus drivers and cab drivers, who
saw their livelihoods in danger. Its designer claimed firmly that
running costs were half those of a horsedrawn van. Press estimates of
its range varied wildly between 25 and 50 miles. The Sun's
representative, who was given a ride, called the van "a triumphant
success". Radcliffe Ward's Hersey-designed electric bus attracted
notice; by mid-August 1894 it was said to have run 3000-4000 miles in
the capital. Ward also ran an electric cab in London at about this time.
The words of the horse cab driver who handled it must have confirmed
his colleagues' worst fears, for he described the machine as easy to
learn and to control.
Bersey and Ward had been involved with electric vehicles for years;
not so Garrard & Blumfield of Coventry, who -like so many others
began to experiment with cars after making a name in the cycle
industry. In June 1894 Charles Garrard's four-wheeled electric
phaeton underwent a successful road trial between Coventry and
Birmingham, a distance of 18 miles, at speeds of up to 10 m.p.h. It then
ran about in the Birmingham streets. The Cyclist was inspired to
prophecy - "The Carriage of the Future", it cried. The device was a
mixture of crudity and advanced thinking. The frame was tubular,
naturally enough, and large-section, small-diameter pneumatic tyres
were fitted - the first to appear on a British car. But the coil springs
protected only the passengers - the motor and the quarter-ton of
fragile batteries (the latter amounting to half the weight of the vehicle)
were unsprung. C.R. Garrard later worked for the Societe des Cycles
Gladiator and for Humber & Company, and eventually made a name
for himself as a designer of exceptionally efficient petrol engines for
Talbot cars.
Electricity remained the motive force of the hour, with confident
supporters. In May 1894 the electrical trades members of the City of
London Chamber of Commerce-prompted, no doubt, by constructors
-wrote to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to ask if, in his
view, electric vehicles were locomotives in law. If he said no, his
officers could hardly bring charges under the Acts. Not surprisingly,
the Commissioner said that they were locomotives; but those who had
raised the question declared that they would ask the Board of Trade
for a ruling. Their confidence seemed justified. Electrics were so un
obtrusive that, in the five years to May 1896, Walter Bersey was not
once prosecuted, active though he was; and by the same year Radcliffe
Ward was working his bus with the tacit consent of the London County
Council.
The New Contender, 1894-5 337
Among native constructors, the partisans of other forms of motive
power were few. Engineering reiterated its earlier praise for the
Serpollet boiler, and continued to do so into 1895. At the 1894 Stanley
Show, James Roots showed a four-stroke kerosene engine for road
vehicles. More significant for the future was the activity of another
experimenter with internal combustion, Frederick William Bremer.
This young Walthamstow engineer had started work in 1892 on a
three-wheeled vehicle designed around a gas engine. While building,
it evolved into the first British motor car to reflect Continental trends
in design. By the time of its first outing on a public road in December
1894, it was a four-wheeler clearly inspired by Mannheim's Benz. A
rear-mounted, water-cooled petrol engine with a single horizontal
cylinder and automatic inlet valve drove through belt primary and
chain final drive. There were two speeds; ignition was by coil and
battery; and a differential was fitted. The wire-spoked wheels were
shod with rubber tyres. The little car's most original feature was
probably its wick carburettor with float feed and hot-water heating to
aid vaporisation. Bremer had little money, so had to make most of the
parts except for the wheels, tyres and chassis. The flywheel was a
grindstone, and the insulation of the sparking plug was a clay pipe
stem.
The car was not finished until January 1895. Its longest expedition
was to Epping and back. Such trips were made very early on Sunday
mornings, so as to escape the attention of the police. In spite of this
precaution, Bremer once met a mounted policeman; but the horse
bolted with its rider, so saving a confrontation. Like so many other
innovators, Bremer lost interest in his creation once it was complete.
Because it attracted no attention at the time, no promoter took it up.
Nothing more was heard of it until 1912, by which time it was an
antique.
These initiatives merely reflected the growing interest in motor
cars; they could not fuel it, because they did not make cars available.
Most were misdirected, and, besides, no one in Britain was going to
build cars for sale until the law was changed. The same could not be
said for two entirely new trends - the actual availability of practical
motor cars on the Continent, and an increasing interest in them among
influential British visitors that culminated in the first importation of
one of the new generation of vehicles. Availability was crucial-for the
first time, would-be motorists in Britain did not have to rely on the
occasional products of native experimenters. By 1894-5 production of
Panhard, Peugeot and Benz had got into its stride, although demand
still exceeded supply; foreigners who were willing to wait, however,
would get their motor cars.