Three apparently unconnected things seemed to me to have a synergy. One is the supposed 75th anniversary of Jaguar, a date that both the company and most of the media have got wrong. Jaguar Cars Ltd. was registered in March, 1945, Jaguar had been the name of some models made by the company under the name SS, an acknowledgement of its roots in Swallow Sidecars. The SS1 was displayed at the London Motor Show in October, 1931, and even if you take the traditional motor manufacturer’s calendar and call that the 1932 model year, that is still not 75 years.
One reason why I find Jaguar fascinating is that it is one of the few car companies to have begun by being a coachbuilder, Jensen was another and I am sure that erudite readers can supply other names. Swallow first made sidecars and then branched into making car bodies, mainly for Austin Sevens.
This last summer I was in a workshop and saw a Bentley Continental GTZ under construction, a Bentley Continental GT given the Zagato treatment. I was not in Milan, I was in Coventry and the guys told me of the trauma of having a new car delivered and then having to attack it with cutting tools.
Zagato’s modifications are handsome. At four times the price of a regular Bentley, it should be, but it is not coachbuilding as I think of the craft, it is much closer to a hot rodder’s custom job.
The third thing that got me thinking was Alfa Romeo’s centenary, which was celebrated at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. I met an Alfista who had been to Milan for the actual centenary. Apparently, the documents that formally created the company were signed at 2:00 p.m. Jaguar cannot get the year right, but the notoriously shambolic Italians got their centenary to the minute.
The Alfa Romeo museum was understrength because two dozen cars had been dispatched to Goodwood. In the Cartier Style et Luxe there were five Tipo 33s, each with a bespoke body made by an Italian studio or, to be more precise, by the survivors. As the 1960s wore on, so more and more specialist coachbuilders closed their doors because manufacturers turned to unitary, or monocoque, construction.
William Lyons could make his SS1 by ordering an underslung chassis, using proprietary mechanical components, mainly supplied by Standard, while Swallow was an established coachbuilder. There was a time Zagato would have built bodies on bare chassis, but in the case of the current Bentley it has been limited to modifying non-stress bearing panels. The GTZ has a signature “double bubble” roofline and hardly anyone who sees one will notice.
The Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 was conceived as a sports racer, but was unusual in that the main chassis elements were two large ovoid tubes that doubled as fuel tanks. This construction permitted, even invited, the easy construction of bespoke bodywork.
Some years ago, I was in correspondence with Nick Walker, who is the expert on British coachbuilding and Nick told me that he had tracked nearly 500 companies in Britain alone. I see no reason to doubt that this proportion was common to many countries. Every town had its cartwrights, wheelwrights and blacksmiths. If you wanted a carriage of any sort to be drawn by horses, the maker had to be local because you had to get the horses to him. Only then could you warble about a Surrey with a fringe on top.[pullquote]
“Jaguar cannot get the year right, but the notoriously shambolic Italians got their centenary to the minute.”
[/pullquote]
When I was a teenager, I regularly saw two Rolls Royce 20/25 trucks. My guess is that the owners had each bought a hearse from a funeral director and had engaged a local panel basher to make a conversion. Not once did I see anything carried in the trucks, but a truck was better than a hearse, unless you were a student, of course.
The main buyer of Royces, never use the term Roller, it is offensive, was the funeral arm of the Cooperative Society. Working people would put their pennies away so that their funerals would be a splash.
In France, the premier coachbuilders were in Paris, an echo of the equine days. In Italy, it was the North West, Milan and Turin. That part of Italy had a tradition of metalwork, which was expressed not only in car bodies, but also in casting. Some of the small constructors, the Etceterini, had bespoke engines produced by the half dozen.
Milan is a center of style, Savile Row is where you go for quality and when it came to coachbuilding, North West London was Savile Row. It is also where I was born and is home to the Royal Academy of Football Art and Science, aka Arsenal.
When you are making a horse-drawn carriage, you need little workshop space. It is only when you add the wheels, the shafts and the nags that the ensemble appears to be big. When you are building car bodies, you have to have the bare chassis in the workshop, so you need larger premises.
All cities expanded as public transport reached out and, in the early part of the last century, London was expanding to the North West so that is where many of the coachbuilders moved. They maintained a presence in the swish parts, like Mayfair, but the manufacturing moved out. You may be making bespoke bodies for the aristocracy, but your workforce has to be able to afford accomodation and life’s little luxuries, like food.
London has a special attraction for me because it is Shakespeare’s city and that has led down interesting paths. My PhD is in Shakespeare and his mates. In his day, the place where I was born was a village, good farming country, nothing special.
For a time, North West London could boast the finest coachbuilders in the world, as well as Arsenal. Here’s a thought, why did Lotus start in North West London? Much of its early success was down to Williams & Pritchard, coachbuilders in Edmonton, which is where?
