Very old car ID help please

[lesapandre]

Its an AA badge bolted to the front of the rad?

[lesapandre]

Rad cap looks similar to Wolseley. Nice car though.

[lesapandre]

Wolseley rad cap...

[vulgalour]

Looking about to try and figure this out, the 1912(ish) Straker Squire seems a reasonable if not perfect fit.  I couldn't pin it down to an exact model, but it has the right sort of feel, especially about the wheel arches and cowl shape.  Note also the very similar radiator cap to the Wolseley item.  http://www.tainmuseum.org.uk/imagelibrary/picture/number240.asp

 

While this example isn't a perfect match, as Junkman points out things like wheels could be very different from car to car, such was the habit of the era.  This one seems a very close match to the car in the original photograph, with some different detailing on the flanks as is to be expected of the era.

 

This is another example of ostensibly the same year model and is quite different but still has some similarities in body styling.

 

The bump underneath the car is probably a spare wheel holder on the other side to what we can see.

 

Things like headlights, badges, trim, and even windscreens can vary quite a lot from car to car in the pre-war era (as I'm learning recently when looking up possible candidates for myself), no two ever really seem alike, so finding a match can be quite tricky.

[lesapandre]

I think the photo itself is possibly 1920's date by the fashion of the cloche had worn by the lady at the wheel.

[lesapandre]

I'm guessing a car of circa 1914 still in use in the 20's with maybe a modified raked windscreen to give it a more 'rakish' or up-to-date look. It may have been on its second or third owner and still being kept in use because it was stylish and useful and not too expensive by then?

[lesapandre]

I mean hat

[lesapandre]

The X above the hat is where someone has written on the photograph. It may be the photo was posted with a letter to someone " us out in the car - XYZ at the wheel marked with an X".

[lesapandre]

As for a fix on the date of the photo the house 7 Woodlands Avenue was for sale. It may be possible at the local archive or record office or even at the local newspaper office to look at back copies of the local newspapers.  If it was a weekly local newspaper look for an ad put in by agent Alfred Coy. If you could find it that would fix the date.

[lesapandre]

And regards the car - if you think at that time your family lived in the same area it might be useful approaching the local county council record office and looking through (if possible) their early county car registration records - say 1910 -30 to see if you can see your family name somewhere which might give a fix on the car as there is no registration visible. Wonder what happened to the car? Does it live on somewhere - most likely not.

[lesapandre]

And so far as a date fix is concerned the photo is definately after 1911 when the AA badge was first manufactured - and would seem to be the longer style prior to 1920. Which would tie up with a car manufactured 1911- 20 possibly. Given the First World War disruption I'd hazard a car manufactured between 1911 and 1914 ish

[Asimo]

The similar details between this car and various Wolseley-Siddeleys are compelling: the scuttle / screen, the mudguards, especially the flare at the rear of the rear'guard.

 

There is a Rolls Royce story; it is about the frustration of my great aunt and grandma at never getting a go in the Rolls next door, despite applying persistant pressure to the chauffer concerned.

 

I have changed my mind about the I.d. of the driver because of that hat. It's probably Great Grandma, as featured in my previous and similar thread http://autoshite.com/topic/18163-pre-war-car-id-please/page-1 which identified a car marque new to me, the Belsize.

[somewhatfoolish]

As for a fix on the date of the photo the house 7 Woodlands Avenue was for sale. It may be possible at the local archive or record office or even at the local newspaper office to look at back copies of the local newspapers.  If it was a weekly local newspaper look for an ad put in by agent Alfred Coy. If you could find it that would fix the date.

Get a copy of the deeds from the Land Registry(about a tenner I think and you can do it online), it will tell you exactly when it sold(and for how much).

[lesapandre]

The similar details between this car and various Wolseley-Siddeleys are compelling: the scuttle / screen, the mudguards, especially the flare at the rear of the rear'guard.

 

There is a Rolls Royce story; it is about the frustration of my aunt and grandma at never getting a go in the Rolls next door, despite applying persistant pressure to the chauffer concerned.

 

I have changed my mind about the I.d. of the driver because of that hat. It's probably Great Grandma, as featured in my previous and similar thread http://autoshite.com/topic/18163-pre-war-car-id-please/page-1 which identified a car marque new to me, the Belsize.

Your Grandma/Greatgrandma/Aunts sound fascinating. Emancipated women of the 1920's with a taste for nicely engineered cars. Which would tie-in with them buying possibly a used high quality car second hand rather than settling for something more modest and new like an Austin 7.

[lesapandre]

Of course they have owned it from new - but it looks very expensive.

[lesapandre]

Could have...

[martc]

Are you sure it was your Great Grandma? I'd have said it was Lady Whiteadder.

 

[RayMK]

Even when radiators were generally mounted in full view rather than behind a cosmetic shell, people often mixed and matched* to keep cars going. Wolseley was a common marque and could thus have provided components or a whole chassis for this large, imposing two seater. Re-engineering the suspension could also have happened but less often I would have thought.  It is clear that the car has not got the cantelever rear springs used on many Rolls Royces after 1912, but it has got the unusual double shackle at the extreme rear, a feature of cars having longitudinal leaf springs at the rear, plus a transverse leaf spring to support them instead of being directly shackled to the chassis at their rearmost ends.  Was this the 'platform suspension' which Rolls Royce used for some models?  I cannot find any proper technical descriptions or indeed photos or diagrams of the pre-cantelever set-up.  Anyway, I keep harping on about this because suspension design has always fascinated me and, so far, I can't find any Wolseleys, Pierce Arrows or indeed anything except Rollers which had this feature.  Body styles were often one-offs and similar coach built structures could be strapped on to anything with a chassis, making positive identification very difficult. It's therefore the chassis 'marque' that I am  more interested in identifying rather than the source of the bodywork.

 

I know it's not quite the same, but as an example of mix and match on my much more recent cars, my 1961 Reliant Regal MKVI has a Ford Prefect radiator; my current Stellar has a Ford Capri rad and my previous Stellar had a rad from a Volvo 66.  All look similar to to the originals and work(ed) fine.   

 

None of my comments are intended to diminish the credibility of previous posts.  I love the thread and all of the contributions so far.  Thanks to the OP for sharing it on here.

[Kringle]

 

Are you sure it was your Great Grandma? I'd have said it was Lady Whiteadder.

 

 

Rofl I was just about to google for this!

[JeeExEll]

Crossley cars from around 1912+15 look interesting, the 20/25 and the 15hp. Mystery car looks a bit like a really cool hot-rod version of this staff car with bling rimz of the period.

 

[Louise2cv]

Great thread! I haven't a clue but it's really interesting reading and a cracking photo.

 

Also a bit of a blast from the past seeing the Alldays and Onions name. Years ago an elderly neighbour introduced himself as Allday, of the Alldays family. Back then I had no clue what he was on about, thought my dad was pulling my leg too when he said Alldays and Onions.

[JeeExEll]

Crossley 1912 15hp with Mann Egerton 4-door tourer body.

http://www.crossley-motors.org.uk/history/preww1/12_14hp/12_14.html

Available as short or long chassis. Warland 12-spoke rims optional (previous page in link).

 

Check out the rear body tub of this 1919 short chassis coupe. Model changed for 1919 so cowl and front are now different.

 

£1500 in 1919 works out at around £75,000 in 2018.

 

1913 long chassis coupe, (special-order?). Looks clumsy in long-chassis with tall roofline.

 

Am still not at all sure if our car is a Crossley.

Had a look at Wolseleys, (see Junkman's post) same period, but haven't seen 2-doors yet with 'flat' rear-deck bodywork. Wolseley front looks very similar to mystery car too.

[JeeExEll]

In the meantime, any ideas about Christine's Model T posted on Monday?

Interesting body style. Maybe a remnant from WW1-era production.

 

This pic is dated 1918, 'Light-Patrol' car. Similar but not the same.

 

 

From some other pics the rad shell changed between 1916 and 1917.

This is a 1913 'Express Wagon' open body with the earlier sharper-edged rad shell.

[mercrocker]

Christine's luxury convertible does indeed look Model T Ford, the one shown below also appears to be a T - the radiator did indeed change from the brass type to the round-shouldered all-black version at, I think, the end of 1916.    

 

This thread has been excellent viewing - I used to have to try and identify stuff like this when a library volunteer at Beaulieu. 

 

To be honest I used to try and fob these off to an older bloke, a lot of the sleuthing was down to dumb-irons, wheel hubs and radiator grilles - none of which were ever very clearly illustrated in the kind of creased, faded and often photo-copied shreds of photograph that used to accompany enquiry letters. 

  

I still have some of the crib-sheets I photocopied at the time showing all the key ID points - God knows where, though. 

 

One thing I do remember was that the body style details would often throw us completely up the wrong alley until one of the afore-mentioned grey-beards would tap out his pipe and jab its stem toward the wheels on the photo.   "Find out what the chassis is...."

[Squire_Dawson]

The body would have been locally constructed, as was the case in those days. Cars were often re-purposed later in life and it would've been easy in those days for the local coachbuilder or anyone with skills to knock up a body to fit the chassis. That looks like an old horse-drawn cart body to me, adapted for the motor car; the steady iron attached to the mudguard gives it away.

[Justin Case]

I have tried to work this one out but so far all I have managed to do is eliminate  a number of possibilities, but there are some clues. Firstly the body is of the style known as a Victoria, which is more touring than sporting, and can be dated pretty accurately to about 1912/1913. Secondly the bonnet looks too short for a six or eight cylinder engine, which rules out luxury makes such as Straker-Squire, and the body looks too long, so it might well have been rebodied. Crossleys of that era have a lower and more angular bonnet line, as anyone with the WW! Matchbox ambulance will know

 

It is likely that the car was bought locally, so I tried to find any garages that could have been ib existence and what makes they sold. The only one I could come up with was Deacon's of LLandudno. This is a later advert:

 

http://www.restandbethankful.net/gallery1/displayimage.php?album=7&pid=1202

 

but some of those makes would have been in existence before WW1. I tried Sunbeam, Talbot and Darracq, but none had the required combination of Acetylene lamps (that looks like  a gas generator on the running board}, Dunlop detachable rims and what look like semi-elliptic rear springs. The car doesn't look American, most of them still had wood spoked artillery wheels even then, so perhaps it is Continental.

 

That narrows the field down so who's next to try and solve the mystery?

[vulgalour]

I'd come to the similar conclusion on the date (1911-1914) based on the body style and fixings and found myself looking at Fiats and Alfas.  That made me think it's not Italian because those cars seem to hide the door handles completely.  The sticky-out oval handles seem a much more British and French thing and occasionally seen on what few Russian pictures I could find so I expect if it is continental it's probably not too exotic.  I also wondered if it was actually a bitsa, a car built from various good parts to create a certain style because various elements of it line up very well with various models and marques but none that I've so far seen (admittedly only a small fraction of what seems to have been available) line up fully with this one.  I got the feeling the body tub is actually much newer than everything else since it seems more in line with the style of cars from about 1914- 1920 while everything else seems more in line with that early 1910s period.

[Asimo]

 Crossleys of that era have a lower and more angular bonnet line, as anyone with the WW! Matchbox ambulance will know

 

 

 

Talking of Crossleys, here is Great Auntie driving a Crossley ammunition truck during war service with the WAAC, somewhere in the Manchester area.

 

[RayMK]

Cadillacs of 1913 +/- a year or two had the distinctive rear suspension. Could it be a special body on a Cadillac chassis?  The example shown looks too short but it shows the suspension.

http://topclassiccarsforsale.com/cadillac/214896-1914-cadillac-landaulet-coupe-rare-aluminum-body.html

[lesapandre]

More Crossley. My hunch is that this is a Crossley with cut-down bodywork from a bigger cabriolet or phaeton to make a more sporting car in the 20's?