1937 Daimler Straight Eight

[1927 S]

Way to many projects !!! Hate to let this one go. Looks good just sitting there, but someone else will love this huge car. This 1937 Daimler 4 1/2 Liter Straight Eight was used in the coronation of King George VI at Westminster Abbey in May 1937. Coach builder was Arthur Mulliner, aluminum body except for the fenders. Needs a complete restoration. Engine turns over and is 100 percent complete, even have the original British black plates. Price is $7500, located in Dayton, Ohio. Contact info as follows Brian Coffee 937-776-7202 skindoccoffee@aol.com. I will be listing a bunch of cars for sale in next few weeks. Going to build a museum, so time to change directions. Always welcome to come and take a look. Brian Just noticed the photo of the engine shows no air cleaner. I have it, sitting on the front seat. I have more photos, and I can have one of my guys send them to you if you want. Thanks

Edited February 8, 2012 by 1927 S (see edit history)

[1927 S]

More photos P100 Headlamps and King of the Road driving light.

Edited February 8, 2012 by 1927 S (see edit history)

[1927 S]

Pics

[Guest BJM]

Can someone educate me on the Daimler brand? Looks like an interesting car but I am not familiar with where these cars ranked in the British hierarchy as I thought the name "Daimler" was German associated, not British.

I know of course of Rolls Royce, Bentley, Jaguar, etc. Or if someone could recommend a book.

[nzcarnerd]

BJM, just google it. The wikipaedia page is a good start. Daimler was the car of choice for the British royalty before Rolls-Royce came along. Even though R-R began pre WW1 I don't think the royals bought one until the 1920s.

[alsancle]

I believe that there have been 2 Pebble Beach best of show Daimlers. This particular car is a full CCCA Classic. A great car with a great history just not a well known make.

[Guest Oracle]

It could be a royal-connected car though the Duke of Kent had a McLaughlin-Buick series 90 at the time. The Royals used Daimlers since Edward VIII became the first monarch toi ride ina motorcar. This lasted until Rolls-Royce were favoured post-war by the Queen although the Queen Mother had Daimler 420G limos bodied by Vanden Plas until they ceased production.

Can I give you all some history from my notes and excuse me if this boring you to death:

Henry (Harry) John Lawson (1852-1925), the son of a Brighton Methodist preacher, first showed a mechanical bent in his youth. In the 1870’s Lawson became associated with the Coventry bicycle industry. However, like Fell he saw richer pickings in company promotions and between the magic period of 1888 and 1896, he floated at least 22 of them, though many of these were to line the pockets of Lawson and his cronies rather than those of the luckless shareholders.

Lawson first became involved with vehicles when he became a student at an engineering institution founded by Stephenson. Lawson first made a “safety bicycle” as he called it, and as mentioned later stood up in Court to reiterate this, in 1873-4 in Brighton. His design of 1876 was possibly the reason for his move to Coventry, since his design was taken up by Singer and Company of that City. In 1878, Lawson went further and adapted rotary action, chain drive and other improvements to the tricycle to create the Coventry Rotary Tricyle which was then followed by several companies starting producing cycles in Coventry.

Lawson realised that once the Locomotive Act was modified, the way would be open for Britain to have its own motor industry. In 1886, Lawson had sought to control Britain’s fledgling electric rail and tramways by attempting to purchase all the related British and foreign patents.

ELECTRIC TRAMWAYS CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE COMPANY LIMITED was registered 8 December 1886. It was formed to acquire or to obtain licenses to use any patent or invention relating to the application of electricity for light or traction, and to construct and work tramways and railways. Also, to enter into an Agreement dated 14 February 1899 with M. Holroyd Smith for the purchase of patents and other benefits, and to construct and maintain electric tramways and work the same with the vendor’s system and patents in the U.K. and France, the vendor top act as consulting engineer and electrician in the company. Consideration £55,000. In 1900 the business carried on by the Electric Street Car Manufacturing Syndicate Limited, manufacturers of and dealers in motor cars, carriages, etc was acquired and taken over by the British Electric Street Tramways Company Limited. The capital authorised was increased by £100,000 6% Preference Shares of £1 each. The rest of the Capital was £250,000 consisting of 250,000 £1 Ordinary Shares.

Directors:

SIR J.K. MACKENZIE

GORDON B. HUNTER

HERBERT G. THOMAS

Offices and Secretary: C[harles]. Osborn, 47 Victoria Street, S.W.

10 Shareholders as at 1901, 55,000 Shares agreed paid, 507 £1 Shares paid.

In 1904, Directors were:

Sir J.K. Mackenzie

H.G. Thomas

Offices and Secretary: E.C. Parford, 47 Victoria Street, S.W.

A petition had been presented by creditors for the appointment of a receiver, and in 1907 it appears as though the same applied, namely that the company was in receivership.

Note that Lawson was not a Director, but nevertheless was behind it! This was the Company that Lawson was convicted of fraud over in 1904, Ernest Hooley and Lawson were convicted of conspiracy to Defraud in connection with attempts to promote the company in 1904.

Then in 1895 he embarked on a similar buying spree, which saw Lawson, Erenest T. Hooley and Martin Rucker acquiring Fredrick Richard Simms’ patent rights to the Daimler engine in the U.K., which were then vested in Lawson’s BRITISH MOTOR SYNDICATE LIMITED, Company Number 46047, which was launched in November 1895. The B.M.S. was a £150,000 Capital with 150,000 issued Ordinary Shares. Simms had formed the Daimler Motor Syndicate in March 1893 which had the benefit of the Daimler Patents acquired by Simms in 1890: The Daimler Syndicate had paid £18,750 to Simms for these patents and so the investers got their money back plus 200% and interest! Simms had been approached by a solicitor representing a private syndicate of Ernest T. Hooley, Martin D. Rucker, and Lawson. Hooley and Rucker were both Lawson cohorts, and both were involved with other flotations: see below. The B.M.S. then sold the licence to use the Daimler patents to the resultant company,

THE DAIMLER COMPANY LIMITED, floated February 1896:

Directors:

GOTTLIEB DAIMLER

WILLIAM WRIGHT

J.H. MACE

J.J. HENRY STURMEY

H.E. SHERWIN HOLT, MA, MIEE

Solicitors: J.B. Purchase, 11 Queen Victoria Street, EC

Arthur T. Ashwell, Nottingham

Consulting Engineer: Billiter Buildings, 49 Leadenhall Street, EC

Secretary: Carles Osborn, Billiter Buildings, 49 Leadenhall Street, EC.

H.E. Sherwin Holt, M.A., Chairman of Swinburne and Company Limited, Electrical Engineers and the initial Chairman one Henry J. Lawson! John Bailey Purchase, Solicitor, 11 Queen Victoria Street, London, who was involved with Swift, De Dion-Bouton, Cycle Components Manufacturing Company Limited.

The Daimler Company also agreed to supply Daimler motors at cost less 10% to The Great Horseless Carriage Company Limited, which as mentioned was taken over by the Lawson Motor Manufacturing Company Limited. Lawson was Chairman of Daimler until 21 October 1897, when he resigned, but he remained a shareholder. He then tried once again to acquire The Daimler Company Limited in 1900, but his offer was rejected. In April 1901, Edward Hodson Bayley was appointed Chairman from 10 April until the 17th. This indicates that fellow promoter Bayley was also a Shareholder in Daimler as well as Lawson.

Who was Holt? In fact there is an interesting connection here with Herbert Dowsing, the inventor of the Dynamotor in 1890. Harold E. Sherwin Holt was elected as a memer of the Institution of Electrical Engineers on 12 January 1893, his address being at Oaklands, Teddington, Middlesex. His proposer was James Swinburne, his seconders Colonel R.E.B. Crompton and J.T. Albright. Crompton of course also proposed Dowsing as well. Holt first acquired some mechanical experience, and then worked for Crompton & Co., Electrical Engineers, for three years gaining experience in outside work and the erection of a large dynamo. In February 1893, Holt and Swinburne went into partnership as Swinburne & Co. Limited, Electrical Engineers of Teddington, and managed their works. By the time that Holt was appointed a Director of Daimlers, he was the Chairman of the company. However, presumably as Holt was involved with motor cars, he appears to have let his membership lapse of the I.E.E. in 1897, and left the company to become an “Electrical Engineer”, listed until 1904. James, later Sir James Swinburne, Baronet, died on 30 March 1958 one month after his 100th birthday. In 1885, Swinburne became a technical assistant with Crompton’s dynamo works, and then later, manager of the works. In due course he went into partnership with Holt, but in 1899 set up as a consulting engineer at 82 Victoria Street, London and began giving advice in the High Court. However, Swinburne was in fact called as an expert, as Professor Swinburne with a Professor Boyes in the legal action in 1897 by The B.M.S, Great Horseless Carriage Company and Lanchester, against Richter and others in connection with the alleged breach of the 1890 patent relating to starting devices for large gas engines. He will much better remembered for inventing a plastic compound, and for becoming Chairman of the company that made that plastic famous, Bakelite Limited, in 1926. It would appear that Lawson and Swinburne may have connected with Lawson through his electric tramways businesses. SWINBURNE AND COMPANY LIMITED was incorporated in 1893, with COMPANY NUMBER 38214.

Lawson also acquired the rights to the Panhard-Levassor and De Dion-Bouton engines [the latter with Simms] and had them vested in The Great Horseless Carriage Company Limited: hence the connection in the case of the latter between Lawson, S.F. Edge and Charles Jarrott. In fact, the first Daimlers were very much like the 2-cylinder Panhard-Levassors because they were! After the Daimler Motor Company Limited was incorporated, the Directors travelled over to the Continent and visited the De Dion-Bouton and Panhard-Levassor factories: see below. However, at the show in 1896, the Daimler company exhibited amongst other items a 2 h.p. oil motor tramcar with three speeds and a top speed of 18 m.p.h. with reversing gear to 600 m.m. gauge, for £160 plus £25 for the tender.

On 20 January 1896, Lawson formed THE MOTOR CAR CLUB SYNDICATE LIMITED at 40 Holborn Viaduct on the second floor, which, with Sir David Salomon’s Self Propelled Traffic Association became powerful pressure groups to lobby Parliament to abolish the Locomotive Act, enacted by the Locomotives on Highways Act 1896, effective Saturday 14 November 1896. This event was marked by Lawson’s Club running an “Emancipation Run” from London-Brighton where Lawson had grown-up, now a very famous annual event. By June 1897, Charles Jarrott was Secretary, the address being 40 Holborn Viaduct: the same as The British Motor Syndicate Limited of which Jarrott was also Secretary! However, the previous Secretary Charles Harrington-Moore and member Frederick R. Simms recognised that the Club was tinged with Lawson’s partiality [i.e. he had formed it for his own, and his cronies’ own ends] and in July 1897, Harrington-Moore and Simms were prime movers in a new organisation, the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland, which first met in August 1897, and was then re-named in 1907 the Royal Automobile Club [R.A.C.] as mentioned above. F.R. Simms proposed in February 1902 a trade organisation which became the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders in July 1902, becoming its first President and serving until 1904, with offices at Norfolk House, Norfolk Street, Strand, London W.C..

Lawson launched in November 1895 Humber and Company Limited to produce bicycles and cars, Daimler in February 1896, and then in May 1896 THE GREAT HORSELESS CARRIAGE COMPANY LIMITED , which marketed the Twin-cylinder 6 H.P. Daimler Wagonette, but this £750,000 flotation flopped. In the Spring of 1897, Daimler moved out of their offices at 40 Holborn Viaduct, and the building was taken over by the British Motor Syndicate Limited instead. Daimler moved to premises in Shaftesbury Avenue. On 18 November 1897, Lawson, Chairman of the British Motor Syndicate Limited [then Company Limited], and fellow Directors T. Childs and R. Robinson with Jarrott as Secretary, proposed and it was agreed in a meeting at the Works in Coventry [“Motor Mills”] that The Great Horseless Carriage Company Limited be taken over by the British Motor Syndicate Limited. The Company then had the benefit of the G.H.C. patents and also those of Lawson himself, which by then amounted to 70 patents! These included the Daimler Patents which dated to before 1890 and which had in fact been passed over by Benz to Gottlieb Daimler, dating from 1886. Also, Lawson maintained that the Syndicate had the benefit of light railway patents, and that they would be building light railways: this ties in with Lawson’s tramway and railway companies at this juncture.

All of these Lawson companies occupied at one time or another in April 1896 the disused cotton mill which had previously been leased to the COVENTRY COTTON SPINNING AND WEAVING COMPANY LIMITED, Company Number 2053, PRO Reference BT31/515 and which was promptly renamed the “Motor Mills”: this comprised a double factory which had been rebuilt in part after a fire in 1891 which burnt out the three top floors, and a large part of which was practically new. 62½ years’ lease remained. A study of the 1897 and 1906 Ordnance Survey maps shows that the premises were previuosly known as Widdrington Mill, and that a siding branched off from the main railway line to feed the Mills, called Widdrington Sidings. The siding was still shown in 1906. To two sides, the premises were bounded by a canal, and by 1906 to the north of the railway siding, Coventry Corporation’s Electricity Works.

Daimler had needed a factory and premises in Cheltenham and Birmingham were inspected, but Ernest Terah Hooley, former Nottingham stockbroker and one of Lawson’s partners in crime found the factory in the Foleshill district of Coventry off Sandy Lane, Radford in April 1896 though the premises had been on the market for three years. It seems that Hooley then sold the benefit of the lease on, and sold it initially to The Daimler Motor Company Limited in April 1896, with a sale on of half of the premises after an immediate, or virtually so, by The Great Horseless Carriage Company Limited. The British Motor Syndicate Limited had been capitalised at £150,000, and Lawson obtained an option on the old Coventry Cotton Mills which covered 12½ acres, on which the second factory had been built at a cost of £30,000: Lawson had it sold to The Great Horseless Carriage Company Limited for rather more than the total sum that The Daimler Motor Company Limited had paid for the whole site: acquired for £17,500 and sold for £18,000! Daimler Motor Company had been capitalised at £100,000 with a 10% over subscription, and Lawson then used £40,000 of Daimler’s Capital to pay himself for the rights acquired from Simms! J.S. Critchley was the works manager, and Simms was consulting engineer. Note that The Motor Mills were served by a branch line of the Coventry Electric Tramways Limited Coventry to Bedworth tramway: there was a depot at Foleshill.

The Motor Manufacturing Company (1907) Limited was finally succeeded by yet another company, the Motor Manufacturing Company Limited, Company Number of 1918-22. It seems that the Motor Manufacturing Company (1907) Limited was liquidated in 1910 and its premises taken over by The Daimler Company Limited, the 1910 Company that replaced the 1904 Company DAIMLER MOTOR COMPANY (1904) LIMITED [which had acquired the original 1896 THE DAIMLER MOTOR COMPANY LIMITED].]

The 1910 company was then acquired by the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA), which eventually sold Daimler (cars and buses) to Jaguar Cars in 1960 I think.

There was also a German Daimler connection to complicate:

On the 30 June 1898, Lawson was involved with the formation of the LONDON STEAM OMNIBUS COMPANY LIMITED, COMPANY NUMBER 58017, formed 1899? with a capital of £420,000, though it never operated a steam bus, and instead took advantage of the petrol engine patents and changed its name in September 1899 to the MOTOR TRACTION COMPANY LIMITED. The company was then proposed to be acquired by the Motor Manufacturing Company Limited as it was hopelessly failing. Another promoter with Lawson was Edward Hodson Bayley. The M.T.C. then ran two German Daimler-engined [12 h.p.] buses on 9 October 1899 until December 1900, though they were being tested in July 1899 at the LONDON SHOW. This was then followed by a German Daimler licensed 3 October 1902 which ran until early in 1904, the bus being to Lawson's own design: probably built by MILNES-DAIMLER LIMITED Company Number 75547 of 1902, subsequently acquired by The Daimler Company Limited

[1927 S]

BTT Thanks

[1927 S]

Car sold

[zzzzzzz]

cool car i hope one day to see it on the road

[Steve_Mack_CT]

See further discussion of same car in the "British" section of this forum. I knew it sounded familliar but could not place it.

To A.J.'s point this is a car you can take to most any event and not see yourself across the aisle for sure, around 6 or so Daimler's in all in the CCCA roster.

Brian, are you really an "eccentric midwest collector"??? I guess we all are to some degree!!!