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Seeking ID of Lady Zoe's automobile

Letter to the editor

 

This expensive car was given to Lady Zoe Laurier by the Governor General. We think that is her on the front seat next to the chauffeur. Her husband Sir Wilfrid Laurier was Canada's Prime Minister at the time. He was well liked and very respected. He was also quite humble and would take the streetcar to work. Flashy cars were not for him. However, Lady Zoe liked cars and this is probably why it was given to her. So, the question is, what type of car is it?

Steve Diggins

 

Published:
Monday December 6th, 2021
David Grimstead
13 December 2021, 16:10
Scotsman by birth, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, High Commissioner of Canada, who was retained by Wilfrid Laurier’s government, bought a 30-H.P. Armstrong-Whitworth landaulet in England in September 1909 just before a visit to Canada where he had built up his significant political influence and wealth. By comparison the then Governor General of Canada, Earl Grey, was said to be no longer wealthy.

Not known if Strathcona’s car went with him to Canada and while his was also an open landaulet, it had a longer passenger compartment with full height side doors with windows under a longer hard roof covering them and the driver. However, the front bodywork, including screen, radiator and bonnet, was substantially the same with identical tool box, horn and those “ball-top” levers that were a distinct new feature of the 30-H.P. A-W from 1908, as described at the November 1907 Motor Show:

“The change speed gear is also somewhat of a simplification of last year’s practice, the four speeds being got by a perfectly straight forward or backward motion without the need for passing through a gate. The lever itself is of the ball-top sort. When moving the lever the top is depressed on the quadrant, whereby a little automatic catch descends on the quadrant and automatically checks the travel of the lever as each gear is achieved, so that it is impossible to pass through a gear unawares.” (NB: “Ball-top” levers were not unique to A-W.)

A 30-H.P. A-W chassis was then £600 and a body like this added about another £200, so the Governor General’s gift would be worth over £100,000 today...

Lady Laurier’s enjoyment of cars caused a diplomatic incident when her limousine was caught doing “excessive speed” in New York in February 1910; she was fined $40. Not for the first time either: in 1906 in Ottawa she was in a car owned by Sir Wilfrid and driven by his chauffeur Henry Birks when he was stopped for speeding; she was fined $22. The Canadian press expressed “pale horror”, not at the speeding but the disrespectful prosecution of the PM’s driver: “... policemen must understand that the auto of a prominent man is not going fast, no matter how fast it may be going.”

Otherwise respected perhaps, Milady and her car-load of friends, including a nun, might still have been a target for this motoring jibe circulating in Canadian cities in 1906: “Caste is divided into three classes: high caste, middle caste and low caste. To the high caste belong all those who are very wealthy and live in large houses, and have automobiles. The last is not strictly necessary, but is often very valuable in keeping down (or knocking down) the other castes.”
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Ariejan Bos
07 December 2021, 21:59
I'm not a Scottish friend, but what I do know is that Kevin Atkinson is of course correct. Only Armstrong-Whitworth had this characteristic broad, flat rad filler tube. Together with other details there can't be any doubt about the identification.
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stewart skilbeck
07 December 2021, 16:06
Could well be an Armstrong Whitworth as Kevin suggests or possibly a Napier. The bonnet profile I suggest rules out Wolseley-Siddeley.
I suggest most probably English - but what about Albion? What do our Scottish friends think?
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Kevin Atkinson
06 December 2021, 23:55
1907 Armstrong Whitworth
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Bob McAnlis
06 December 2021, 20:07
Would appear to be 1906/7 Wolseley or Siddeley. A pretty large one.
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