A couple of years ago, I wrote about Coventry as the Detroit of the UK and the essential part it played in the rise and subsequent fall of the British motor industry. The lead photo for that piece was of the exterior of the Coventry Transport Museum, which was a meeting point for participants in the Silverstone Classic Retro Run a few years ago, hence the presence of die Zitrone in that photo. However, there wasn’t enough time to go inside, something I was able to put right a few days ago, easily done as, like the British Motor Museum, it’s within an hour of my new home.
The collection at the museum illustrates that history exceptionally well, not shying away from the darker period of the 1970’s through to the closure of the last major factory in the city, the Ryton plant, at the end of 2006. As it’s name implies, it has both a slightly wider and simultaneously narrower brief, focusing largely, but not exclusively, on the manufacture of bikes, cars and commercial vehicles in the city, and I dropped in for a couple of hours last week.
The Coventry Transport Museum claims to house the largest publicly funded collection of vehicles in the world. It moved to its current premises in 1980, with the museum itself dating back to 1937 and is a beautifully laid out journey through a history of transport in the UK, with a strong emphasis on the city’s own contribution to that history. After all, it was the home of Triumph, Jaguar-Daimler, Hillman, Singer, Sunbeam, Alvis and numerous other famous names, many no longer with us.
The exhibits are laid out in chronological order, making the history easy to follow, and starts with displays of pedal-powered contraptions that look almost impossible to ride and control, as well as being very uncomfortable – the earliest bikes weren’t called “boneshakers” for nothing!
The first vehicle to be powered by an internal combustion engine is generally considered to have been built by Karl Benz in 1885, but it wasn’t long after this that cars were being built in Coventry and the first proper car factory in Britain was the Motor Mills, set up in Drapers Fields, Coventry, and an example of a Daimler Phaeton built there in 1898 is on show. The earliest British car displayed, however, is an 1897 Daimler Wagonette, in black with red detailing.
Many of the names of the city’s motor manufacturers from the early days have long disappeared, but examples of their cars survive and some are here. Names such as Payne and Bates, Maudslay (later Standard), Siddeley-Deasy, Swift and Calcott came and went and have been long forgotten by most, but are remembered here.
The first half of the 20th century also saw companies like Rover, Riley, Alvis and Hillman emerge, and one of the loveliest exhibits is the oldest surviving Alvis, a 10/30 Tourer from 1920 (second from the left in the fourth photo below). As well as a very early Riley – a 1908 12/18 model – the first Hillman Minx (from 1931) is also on show; with chassis and engine number M1, meaning M for Minx, perhaps one of the first “matching numbers” cars?
Other companies that established motor car factories in the area included Humber, Lea-Francis, Singer and Sunbeam, all long-consigned to the history books. There’s a lovely pairing of a black over blue 1930 Humber Super Snipe, a very upmarket car in its day, and a green 1932 Alvis 12/60 roadster (stunning!) showcasing the best of the city’s products at the time.
Part of a quartet parked on a slightly elevated stand was a fine black 1935 Jaguar SS, the first car to carry the Jaguar name – more on them later – alongside a very smart 1938 Alvis Speed 25, with a more modest black over green 1934 Triumph Gloria and a 1930 Standard Swallow in beige and brown behind these two prestige sports saloons – cars of this period are almost always enhanced by two-tone colour schemes.
Probably the grandest cars on display are a trio of “royal” Daimlers, the first of which is a 1935 Daimler limousine, one of two that were given to Queen Mary and King George V and subsequently used by the Royal Family until 1953. Situated behind it, a 1937 Daimler 4 ½-litre used by one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting and deployed for the coronation of King George VI – Daimler was clearly the regal brand back then, something which continued after the war with the 1947 Daimler Landaulette used by King George VI, again in black over maroon.
During the war years car production was given over to military vehicles, and the resumption of regular production cars saw the running-board style maintained initially, but this was quickly replaced by all-enveloping bodywork, sometimes with an aerodynamic bent, such as the 1948 Standard Vanguard, the company’s first all-new post-war car and based on American designs of the period. Things moved on quickly, as more modern designs came to market, among them the Triumph TR2 – there was a lovely example at the museum – and subtle US influences began to show through with modest fins and big radiator grilles on cars such as the 1960 Hillman Minx Easidrive (another word for automatic) and 1960 Series III Sunbeam Rapier – the one on show was the exact colour scheme of the Rapier my father ran in the mid-‘60’s.
I loved the bronze 1963 Mk.1 Humber Sceptre – with period advert on the wall alongside – and at this point in the story, we start to see a few names fade away, such as the 1960 Armstrong Siddeley Star Sapphire, which was the last model to be made at the company’s Coventry factory.
Heading into the later 1960’s and into the ‘70’s, superb examples of cars from Triumph and Rover (the latter admittedly built nearer Birmingham than Coventry) were on show, including the last car to carry the Triumph badge, the Acclaim. This was basically a more luxurious Honda Ballade manufactured under licence and while dispiritingly nothing like an actual Triumph, was a success. I was at the car’s launch at the NEC, complete with lasers and moving grandstands, and ran one as a company car for a while. It was bland, but smooth and reliable, and had the lowest warranty costs of any car in the company’s line-up, which made one question why the rest of BL’s cars had so many quality issues.
A couple of interesting aspects to the Rootes display are that the ’75 Hillman Imp on show was not built in Coventry, but at the Rootes Group’s Linwood, Scotland, factory, after the group had failed to gain government support for another factory in their home city, and the Hillman Hunter next to it is in fact a 1980 Paykaan Hillman saloon, which was basically a Hillman Hunter kit assembled in Iran, something I knew nothing about – every day’s a school day.
The 1978 takeover of Chrysler UK (who had already taken overall control of the Rootes Group in 1967) by Peugeot Citroen was the beginning of the end for famous brands such as Sunbeam, Hillman, Singer and Humber, as the Linwood and Ryton factories were converted to building Peugeots, some badged as Talbots.
As the most prestigious and probably famous motoring name from the city of Coventry, Jaguar-Daimler has an additional dedicated area of the museum that runs through the company’s history in 14 cars besides the ones contained in the general collection, starting with the Austin Seven Swallow. Swallow was founded by William Lyons and William Walmsley and was originally based in Blackpool as a manufacturer of motorcycles and sidecars. They ventured into the car business by building bodies on chassis from Morris, Standard, Swift and on the Austin Seven, such as the one at the museum. The business moved to Coventry in 1928, started selling cars as SS Cars Limited, changing the name to Jaguar Cars Limited in 1945, the Jaguar name having first appeared on the SS sports and saloon cars in 1936.
The display showcases most of the best-known models of the company’s next 50 years, including the XK120 and 150, XJ6, Mark II and of course the E-Type, which caused a sensation when it was launched in 1961.
This section ends with a Jaguar F1 car from the brief foray into Grand Prix racing between 2002 and 2004, which leads neatly into a hall dedicated to competition cars, of which perhaps the stand-out is the first Sunbeam Lotus rally car. Originally driven by Tony Pond, this car was re-liveried in the colours of Henri Toivonen’s 1980 RAC Rally-winning colours. Besides an early Sunbeam There’s also an intriguing 1970 Techcraft BRM GP car with four-wheel-drive developed by tractor manufacturer Harry Ferguson.
An earlier example of Ferguson’s 4WD system is also on show at the museum, the 1952 Ferguson R4 prototype, featuring technology that eventually appeared in Grand Prix racing on the FP99 – although it only raced once in a World Championship race, the British GP in 1961 – and of course provided the FF in the Jensen FF a few years later. Ahead of its time and not a commercial success, every manufacturer now seems to have at least one 4WD model in its line-up.
From there visitors are taken through a hall with a display of some of the area’s commercial and military vehicles, including a bus painted to celebrate the city’s football club’s FA Cup triumph in 1987 – that must seem a very long time ago now for supporters of Coventry City now languishing in the second-tier of English football alongside my own team, Stoke City. In fact, the Sky Blues, as they are known, sit a few places above Stoke at the time of writing.
We then pass a series of display cases filled with hundreds of model cars that are not limited to small versions of locally-built cars but cars from the world over, a dream collection for both smaller and bigger boys, before emerging into a hall dedicated to a pair of land speed record vehicles. There is no real connection with Coventry or indeed the Midlands with the pair of huge rocket-powered vehicles (they’re not really cars; more like ground-based aircraft). The first of these is the 35,000bhp Thrust 2 that reached a speed of 633.468mph/1019.470kmh, the second is the simply overpowering and menacing black Thrust SSC or Super Sonic Car, which looks like nothing other than a wingless jet fighter. Powered by two Rolls-Royce jet engines, this enormous machine was the first “car” to exceed the sound barrier, reaching 763.035mph at Black Rock on October 1st 1997. Just look where the driver (pilot?) sits!
This brings us to the end of an enthralling walk through the history of two-and-four wheeled mechanical transport. The museum shop is, in truth, a bit disappointing, but the Esquires café inside the building is an excellent place to enjoy a light lunch at the end of a morning spent among the exhibits. Annoyingly for a museum about transport, it does not have any car parking, the area out front seemingly reserved for special events, but there are two pay car parks within a few hundred metres. The entry ticket, priced at £14, entitles you to a year’s entry, so if, like me, you live close enough to easily visit the museum more than once a year, it’s a bargain, but even if you can only go once, it’s money and time well spent.
