AUTOMOBILE PROFILE 43 HORIZONTAL-ENGINED WOLSELEYS 1900-1905 TRICARS
BEETLES SPECIFICATIONS PRODUCTION DATA
BY ANTHONY BIRD
THE WOLSELEY
TRICARS
THE 1900 1,000
MILE TRIAL CAR
THE WOLSELEYS IN
PRODUCTION
HORIZONTAL VERSUS
VERTICAL ENGINES
THE BEETLES
THE 1904 10 H.P.
2-CYLINDER WOLSELEY
THE 1904 6 H.P. SINGLE-CYLINDER
WOLSELEY
WOLSELEY
PRODUCTION MODELS 1900 TO 1905
SPECIFICATIONS
1905
GORDON-BENNETT CUP TRIALS
The Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Company of Adderley Park
Birmingham was incorporated in March 1901 with a capital of £40,000 by Vickers,
Sons and Maxim to manufacture motor cars and machine tools. The managing
director was Herbert Austin. The cars and the Wolseley name came from Austin's
exploratory venture for The Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company Limited,
run since the early 1890s by the now 33-year-old Austin. Wolseley's board had
decided not to enter the business and Maxim and the Vickers brothers picked it
up. After his five-year contract with The Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Company
ended Austin founded The Austin Motor Company Limited.
Austin had been searching for other products for WSSMC
because sale of sheep-shearing machinery was a highly seasonal trade. About
189596 he became interested in engines and automobiles. During the winter of
189596, working in his own time at nights and weekends, he made his own
version of a design by Léon Bollée that he had seen in Paris. Later he found
that another British group had bought the rights and he had to come up with a design
of his own, having persuaded the directors of WSSMC to invest in the necessary
machinery.
In 1897 Austin's second Wolseley car, the Wolseley
Autocar No. 1 was revealed. It was a three-wheeled design (one front, two rear)
featuring independent rear suspension, mid-engine and back to back seating for
two adults. It was not successful and although advertised for sale, none were
sold. The third Wolseley car, the four-wheeled Wolseley "Voiturette"
followed in 1899. A further four-wheeled car was made in 1900. The 1901
Wolseley Gasoline Carriage featured a steering wheel instead of a tiller. The
first Wolseley cars sold to the public were based on the
"Voiturette", but production did not get under way until 1901, by
which time the board of WSSMC had lost interest in the nascent motor industry.
Thomas and Albert Vickers, directors of Vickers and Maxim
Britain's largest armaments manufacturer had much earlier decided to enter the
industry at the right moment and impressed by Austin's achievements at WSSMC
they took on his enterprise. When Austin's five-year contract officially ended
in 1906 they had made more than 1,500 cars, Wolseley was the largest British
motor manufacturer and Austin's reputation was made.
The company had been formed in March 1901. By 1 May 1901
Austin had issued his first catalogue. There were to be two models, 5 hp and 10
hp. They were both available with either a Tonneau or a Phaeton body with
either pneumatic or solid tyres. For an additional outlay of thirty shillings
(£1.50) the 10 hp model would be fitted with a sprag to prevent it running
backwards. "We recommend pneumatic tyres for all cars required to run over
twenty miles an hour. Austin then provided a paragraph as to why his horizontal
engines were better lubricated (than vertical engines) and that 750 rpm, the
speed of his Wolseley engines, avoided the short life of competing engines that
ran between 1,000 and 2,000 rpm."
Engines were horizontal which kept the centre of gravity
low. Cylinders were cast individually and arranged either singly, in a pair or
in two pairs which were horizontally opposed. The crankshaft lay across the car
allowing a simple belt or chain-drive to the rear axle.
Austin's
resolute refusal to countenance new vertical engines for his Wolseleys,
whatever his directors might wish, led to Austin handing in his resignation the
year before his contract ended. Curiously in his new Austin enterprise all the
engines proved vertical but there he had to suffer a new financial master.
Vickers replaced Austin by promoting Wolseley's London sales manager, John
Davenport Siddeley to general manager. As Austin was aware Vickers had earlier
built, in association with Siddeley, Siddeley's vertical-engined cars at their
Crayford Kent factory. The new Siddeley cars began to overtake Wolseley's sales
of "old-fashioned" horizontal-engined cars. In early 1905 they hired
Siddeley for their London sales manager and purchased the goodwill and patent
rights of his Siddeley car. Siddeley, on
his appointment to Austin's former position, promptly replaced Austin's
horizontal engines with the now conventional upright engines.