Wolseley (-Siddeley)

GB, 1899 – 1906, 1911 to date

(1) Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Co Ltd, Birmingham, 1899 – 1901 

(2) Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Co Ltd, Birmingham, 1901 – 1914

(3) Wolseley Motors Ltd, Birmingham, 1914 – 1927

(4) Wolseley Motors (1927) Ltd, Birmingham, 1927 – 1948

(5) Wolseley Motors (1927) Ltd, Cowley, Oxford, 1949 – 1970

(6) Austin-Morris Division, British Leyland Motor Corp Ltd, Cowley, Oxford, 1970 to date

The first prototype Wolseley car was a 3-wheeler on Léon Bollée lines made by the Wolseley car company’s General Manager, Herbert Austin, in 1896. The Wolseley car featured two horizontal cylinders and overhead camshaft. A second improved Wolseley car model was made in 1897, but production Wolseley cars were based on the 3½hp 4-wheeler of 1899, which competed successfully in the Thousand Miles’ Trial of 1900. This Wolseley car had a single-cylinder horizontal engine mounted at the front with the head pointing forward, automatic inlet valve, coil ignition, a wrap-round tubular radiator, 3-forward speeds, tiller steering, and belt primary and chain final drive, and formed the basis for the Austin-designed Wolseley cars made under Vickers auspices for the next six years.

By 1901 wheel steering, artillery wheels and chain primary drive had been adopted on the Wolseley car, and the single, now rated at 5hp, could be bought for £260, while there was a 10hp 2.6-litre twin Wolseley car at £360, and a 4-cylinder racing Wolseley car with 5-speed gearbox available to special order. Wolseley cars were already among the biggest British producers with 327 Wolseley cars sold that year, increasing to 800 in 1903 and 3.000 Wolseley cars by 1914, when they led the national industry. A 5.2-litre horizontal-four Wolseley car was listed in 1902, from which 52mph was claimed, and the twin-cylinder Wolseley cars of 1905-1906 had mechanically-operated inlet valves.

Austin supported racing energetically, entering 3- and 4-cylinder Wolseley cars for the Paris-Vienna in 1902, while the big 11.9-litre flat-4 Beetles put up the best British performances in the Gordon Bennett Cup Races of 1904 and 1905. Queen Alexandra bought a Wolseley car in 1904, but Austin’s obstinate adherence to the horizontal engine was not appreciated by the Wolseley car company’s directors, and he resigned in 1905 to form his own company. Already Wolseley were making a 3.3-litre vertical-engined 4-cylinder Wolseley car to the designs of J.D. Siddeley (variously known as a Wolseley-Siddeley or Siddeley), and these versions dominated the Wolseley car range in 1906, though single- and twin-cylinder Wolseley cars of the Austin era survived for one more season. 1906 Wolseley-Siddeley cars were made with overhead inlet valves, and (in some cases) overdrive gearboxes, bigger Wolseley car models having oversquare engines, separately-cast cylinders, and chain drive, while the range embraced everything from a shaft-driven 12hp vertical-twin at £325 up to a touring version of Siddeley’s 1905 Gordon Bennett Trials racer, a 15.7-litre Wolseley-Siddeley car listed at £1.250. Licence-production of Wolseley cars in Italy was initiated under the name of Wolsit. Thermo-syphon cooling was introduced on the Wolseley-Siddeley Ten in 1907, in which year a shaft-driven version of the 5½-litre 4-cylinder 30 could be bought, as well as the Wolseley car company’s first six, an 8½-litre 45 with dual ignition. L-head engines were standard in 1908, and 1909 saw the end of chain drive and the introduction of a smaller 24/30hp 6-cylinder Wolseley-Siddeley car. In 1910 came the very successful monobloc 2.2-litre 4-cylinder Wolseley-Siddeley 12/16 with pressure lubrication and worm drive at £370. At the other end of the range was the big bevel-driven 6-cylinder Wolseley-Siddeley 40/50 at £660 for a chassis.

Siddeley had gone to Deasy in 1909, and for 1911 the cars became plain Wolseley cars once more. 1913 Wolseley cars had air-pressure fuel feed, the best seller being the 3.2-litre 16/20 Wolseley car with dual ignition at under £500. In this year an experimental gyrocar was made for the Russian inventor Count Schilovsky, while a worm-driven light car, the Wolseley Stellite, was being made by a subsidiary company. The 1914 Wolseley car range consisted of the 16/20, and two sixes rated at 24/30 and 30/40, all Wolseley cars with electric lighting and detachable wire wheels. The Wolseley sixes had bevel drive, and came equipped with compressed-air starters, supplanted in 1919 by conventional electrical units.

Wolseley cars made the V8 overhead-camshaft Hispano-Suiza aero engines during World War 1, and their first true post-war 1 Wolseley cars featured both overhead camshafts and detachable heads, though a 3.9-litre sv six Wolseley car was made in various forms up to 1927. The 1.3-litre 10 Wolseley car had a rear-axle gearbox, quarter-elliptic springs, worm drive, and coil ignition, and replaced the Stellite; it cost £500, and there was a companion 2.6-litre ohc 15 Wolseley car with a conventionally-mounted gearbox. In 1921 the Wolseley car company made 12.000 Wolseley cars, and numerous types were offered in ensuing years, including aluminium-bodied sports versions of the 10 and 15 Wolseley cars, an austerity edition of the 10 two-seater, and a 7hp flat-twin at £295. In 1925 the 10 grew up into a four-seater 11/22 Wolseley car, and the 15 was replaced by an sv 16/35 Wolseley car, the last new side-valve Wolseley car.

For 1927 the Wolseley car company offered a new 2-litre 16/45hp ohc Wolseley car Silent 6 with spiral bevel final drive and 4-speed gearbox, but in the meanwhile the Wolseley car company had gone bankrupt, and had been acquired by Sir William Morris (Lord Nuffield). Under new management the ohc designs Wolseley cars were developed as well as being adapted to the companion makes of Morris and MG. New Wolseley cars in 1928 were a coil-ignition 2.7-litre straight-8 at £750, and a 12/32hp 4-cylinder, also ohc, at £315. In 1929 there was a short-lived and very expensive 8-cylinder 32/90 Wolseley car and a more important 6-cylinder 21/60 Wolseley car which in export form boasted Budd welded all-steel bodywork and Lockheed hydraulic brakes, and was virtually a Wolseley car edition of the Morris Isis which followed it in the 1930 season.

That year Wolseley cars pioneered the really cheap small six in England with the 1.3-litre Wolseley Hornet; this Wolseley car shared the 21/60’s hydraulics, and resembled a Morris Minor with two extra cylinders and an elongated bonnet. The Wolseley car offered remarkable flexibility for £185, and attracted a vast diversity of inexpensive special bodywork from such firms as E.W. (Eustace Watkins) and Swallow. The 1931 stablemates of this Wolseley car were a 2-litre Wolseley Viper with Morris styling at £285, and 6- and 8-cylinder versions of the 21/60 Wolseley car, all with overhead camshafts. 1932 Wolseley Hornets had a forward engine mounting allowing of roomy 4-door saloon bodywork without lengthening the wheelbase, while a twin-carburettor sports version, the Wolseley Hornet Special, was marketed as a chassis only at £175.

In 1933 came the illuminated radiator badge on the Wolseley car, a Wolseley hallmark over since, and 1934 Wolseley cars had synchromesh, a roomy 1-litre 4-cylinder Wolseley Nine at £179 joining the Wolseley Hornet, now available with free wheel at £215. In 1935 there was a brief venture with preselector gearboxes and some new ohc 6-cylinder Wolseley cars. The Wolseley Nine gave way to the bigger Wolseley Wasp, the Wolseley Hornet grew up to 1.4-litres, and a 1.6-litre 14hp Wolseley car formed the basis for a 50bhp Wolseley Hornet Special capable of nearly 80mph, but 1936 was the last year of overhead camshafts on Wolseley cars. Already the old 21/60 had been replaced by a range of ohv push-rod Super Sixes, virtually luxury 4-speed Wolseley car derivatives of the Series II Morris with easy-clean wheels and more luxurious equipment, and by the end of the year the 4-cylinder light Wolseley cars had fallen into line with this theme. Last to go was the Wolseley Fourteen which in June, 1936 reappeared as a push-rod 1.8-litre 14/56 selling for £265.

By 1939-1940 a comprehensive Wolseley car range included a 1.140cc Wolseley Ten (the mechanical components of Morris’s Series-M mounted in a separate chassis), a 1½-litre 4-cylinder 12/48 Wolseley car, and sixes of 14, 16, 18, 21, and 25hp, the last-mentioned version of the Wolseley Super Six being also available as a sporting drophead coupé and a limousine. The 18hp model Wolseley car, introduced in 1937, was adopted by Scotland Yard and was the first Wolseley car to win general favour with police forces, a connection that has continued with subsequent 6-cylinder models into the 1960s. A 1939 18/85 Wolseley car driven by Humfrey Symons broke the London-Cape record with a time of 31 days 22 hours despite falling through a bridge in the Congo.

A rather smaller range of similar Wolseley cars went back into production in 1945, rounded out by an 8hp Wolseley car which was a de luxe, ohv development of the Series-E Morris 8. For 1949 a removal to Cowley was accompanied by two entirely new Wolseley cars with unitary construction, and hypoid final drive: these Wolseley cars were basically similar to the Morris Oxford and Six, though the smaller 4/50 had a 4-cylinder version of the ohc power unit common to the Morris and Wolseley Sixes. Coil-and-wishbone independent front suspension replaced the torsion-bar layout in the 1953 4/44 Wolseley car, powered by a detuned version of the T-type MG engine, but the effect of the Nuffield-Austin merger was soon felt in a rationalization of design.

The first Austin-engined Wolseley car was the 2.6-litre 6/90 of 1955, which Wolseley car shared a both with Riley’s Pathfinder, and was available the following year with overdrive or automatic transmission, but 1958 brought an attractive compact 1½-litre saloon, the Wolseley 1500, which was basically an expanded Morris Minor with rack-and-pinion steering and a close-ratio 4-speed gearbox. A Riley equivalent was also marketed, and BMC’s Australian factory offered variants with Austin and Morris nameplates.

This was Wolseley cars last individual effort, and subsequent Wolseley cars have been luxury editions of basic Austin/ Morris themes, a Mini variant, the Hornet, making its appearance in 1962. A luxury 1100 variant appeared in 1966, evolving into a 1300 by 1968. A year earlier Wolseley  cars had announced their 18-85 or de luxe 1800, though the Hornet had gone by 1969. In 1973 the 1300, the 18-85, and a 6-cylinder front wheel drive 2200 were offered.

Source: Georgano, encyclopedia of motorcar; MCS      

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