This article is about a low volume car manufacturer that survived by manufacturing military vehicles and aircraft engines. T.G. John founded a company in his name in 1919 as a supplier of engines and scooter style motorised bikes. He set up his company in Coventry in the UK, which was at the heart of the British industry. The following year John used a new four cylinder engine … [Read more...]
Gordon-Keeble
This week for this article I am going to talk about a rare tortoise! The Gordon-Keeble was a limited life high performance 2+2 developed and manufactured in Britain during the 1960s. It had a limited life due to cash flow problems that meant that the company was liquidated before production and sales really took off. The Gordon-Keeble was the brainchild of John Gordon and Jim … [Read more...]
Lanchester
This weeks history article is about Lanchester, one of Britain’s first car companies, in fact it was founded as the motor industry was snowballing as many companies had sprung up to satisfy initial demand for motor vehicles. Their first claim to fame was that they built the very first British motor car in 1895 - a few years before the company was formed. The Lanchester … [Read more...]
Jensen Motors
This week's history article is about a coachbuilder that became a manufacturer and survived the low volume manufacturing by being a supplier to other major manufacturers. The company is Jensen Motors based in the middle of the UK and was founded in 1934 by Richard and Alan Jensen who worked for WJ Smith, a commercial truck manufacturer. Prior to being with WJ Smith, the two … [Read more...]
Bristol Cars
If you are eccentric or fully loaded with pots of money you may be in the market for a Bristol – a very rare supercar that most people will never have seen! Like many car companies around the world, they came out of aircraft manufacturing – think about my history articles on Cord and Duesenberg, they used Lycoming who developed aircraft engines and there would have been a lot … [Read more...]