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Our Publicity Officer Tony Russell, who warns our
visiting venues of the SVVS impending arrival, obtained this photo from
the Facebook page of the Cock at Headley. The photo was posted by Peter
Denyer advising " Hire cars run by the Booth
Family previous Landlords of The Cock parked in Church Approach early 20th
century. Our Tony Russell asked if the SVVS Help Pages car identification service could
advise more on the cars.
The Cars are Left: cca 1912
Wolseley Siddeley 16'20 Landaulette and c Right: ca 1912 Ford Model T
Tourer.
The car on the left is a British car made by company started by men
experienced in machine guns and sheep shearing machines joining forces to
make flying machines with the help of Herbert Austin. This is a cca 1912
Wolseley 16'20 Landaulette made by Wolseley Motors Ltd which was started
in 1901 by the Vickers Armaments conglomerate, which itself was started in
1828 by Edward Vickers mainly as a steel making company. Various clever
people joined and company grew, diversifying also into many businesses
including armour plating. They then bought a shipyard which came with an
armaments manufacturer. The armaments manufacturer was interested in cars
and had contacts with the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machinery Co. Under
Vickers they formed the Wolseley Tool & Motor Co. who's Managing
Director was Herbert Austin, who had been exploring French Leon Bollee
cars. Finding that Bollee had gone elsewhere, Austin persuaded Vickers to
make their own, and by 1906 they had made 1,500 cars. Meanwhile John
Siddeley had been running his own car business as Siddeley Autocar since
1902 based on the French Peugeot design. Some were made for him by the Vickers
factory in Crayford Kent. Wolseley purchased Siddeley Autocar in 1905 and
made Siddeley the Sales Manager in London. This coincided with Herbert
Austin having a row with the Wolseley board about car engines and
departing to form his own subsequent car empire. John Siddeley took over
Austin's post and added his name to the Wolseley brand, becoming Wolseley-Siddeley.
However, he
also subsequently left Wolseley in 1909 to join the Deasy Motor Co,
becoming Siddeley-Deasy. The car in this photo was made after Siddeley's
departure from Wolseley but before the Siddeley part of the name was
dropped.
The car on the right is the result of the third
attempt by Henry Ford to build cars. His first attempt as a motor mechanic
was in 1899 with the Detroit Automobile Co where he had twelve backers. By
1901 it had failed, having made twenty vehicles, and made an investment loss
of $2.6 million, in today's money. He then formed out of the ashes The
Henry Ford Co in 1901 which also failed a year later due to Ford having
rows with his investors and leaving. The company was taken over by Henry
Leland who used all the Ford ideas and designs to carry on building cars
and expanding the company to become the Rolls-Royce of America, - the
Cadillac. Henry Ford, undaunted, formed the Ford Motor Co in 1903 and
started making the Model A. He very quickly worked through the alphabet of
letter
models to 1908 when he introduced the Model T. This proved successful and
by 1914 Ford had produced almost 90 percent of all of the world's
automobiles. By the time it ended production in 1927, more than 15 million
had been sold. In Britain Ford began Model T assembly operations in 1911
in Trafford Park Manchester, the first outside US; chassis and engine US,
bodies UK. Six thousand alone had been produced in 1913 when this photo
was taken, making the Model T the best-selling car in the UK with 30 percent
of the market. In 1914 they introduced UK's first moving assembly
line making 21 cars per hour. Relating to the photo above, without a very much clearer view of
individual features it is not possible to say if this is a UK made car or
an imported car from the USA and
determine precisely the year of manufacture. Remaining visually basically
the same throughout the production run, the differences in the years are
down to very specific details.
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