Trojan army: the dawn of a new era for the utilitarian wonder

The Croydon RK series ran from December, 1922, to January, 1927. so the registration numbers allocated to the vans in the picture seem likely to have been issued in about 1925—also the open cab design had surely been superseded by doors with glass windows before 1928.

Trojan’s Purley Way Sales and Service depôt address first appeared in small adverts for second-hand, factory-overhauled Trojan vans in July, 1927. Shortly, it appeared in new Trojan adverts: “Sole Concessionaires in Great Britain for the Sale and Service of Trojan vehicles manufactured by LEYLAND MOTORS LTD.” Leyland built and supplied them on a royalty payment basis.

Trojan’s move out of Leyland’s Kingston factory was announced in May, 1929, and Leyland’s chairman confirmed in January, 1930, that his company had surrendered its licence and was no longer concerned in any way with production or sales of Trojans. That January at Purley Way, Basil Monk, then Trojan’s M.D., launching its new models, said that its cars had been built by Leyland at their works until 12th August, 1929.

The new models were designed by Leslie Hounsfield with pneumatic tyres, reduced ground-clearance and an engine at the back. Cost was £179 for a five-seater saloon or tourer and £390 for a commercial six-wheeler. They were built by Vicarage Road production manager Mr. A. Flowers and scheduled to reach an output of fifty cars per week by spring – both sites recruited a lot of experienced motor engineering staff from mid-1929 to mid-1930. Parts bought in or manufactured at Vicarage Road were transported to Purley Way for final assembly.

Monk, who had joined the twelve staff at Vicarage Road in 1921 after war service, became joint manager in 1923 presumably because Hounsfield concentrated on the engineering of Trojan cars by and at Leyland’s in Richmond. Monk was evidently Trojan Ltd.’s driving-force by the mid-1920s and became sole M.D. in 1926. He even took a Trojan on the 1932 R.A.C. Rally and came seventh. He was unplaced in 1933 but adverts claimed that a Trojan had crossed the Sahara Desert that year.

In his 1930 speech at the Purley depôt, he claimed that Trojan produced its first car at Vicarage Road in 1910 and retained its first 1913-registered model. The company was formally incorporated there in 1914 and it was still “head office” in the mid-1930s when the public company, Trojan Holdings, was formed to take over the original business. Trojan Holdings under Monk constructed and partly equipped the expanded Purley facilities, on Trojan Way behind the depôt buildings, by mid-October, 1936. Coincidentally, “the Trojan way” was a term used in adverts to define their product’s uniqueness.

Trojan Holdings claimed in its share issue notice that it had supplied Brooke-Bond with 325 vans per year for ten years from 1925 and it had sixteen other major fleet purchasing customers by 1936. Monk announced that the company’s future main turnover would be in commercial vehicles, nine types from 7cwt. to 20/25cwt., although it had already become a major supplier of aircraft components and would be saved by manufacturing those throughout the Second World War. In 1937, Monk bought Trojan a 20 per cent. stake in the metals business of Bean Industries.

In the 1950s, Trojan would supply 200 ice-cream vans to Walls—the last with a golden ignition key. After vehicles, its biggest output was post-war Mini-Motors for bicycles, for which they claimed sales of 19,000 in Great Britain, Europe and America by May, 1950, when they were making 1,000 per week. The part of the factory with a frontage on Purley Way was only put up for sale in 1957.

Not born there, Monk was a Croydon alderman from 1933, mayor in 1954-55, remained Trojan’s M.D. until 1952 and was its chairman until retirement in May, 1959, after 38 years with them and after Trojan had merged with James and Peter Agg's Lambretta Concessionaires. Most Lambretta staff moved to Croydon from its Kingston By-pass site.

Not forgetting designer and founder Hounsfield who, after several years in his Edwardian Clapham works engineering tools and motor repairing, was already a respected motor and general engineer by 1909, being a signatory to the report of the Institute of Automotive Engineers on engine power rating. His application for a patent for a “Two-stroke cycle internal combustion engine” followed in autumn, 1913. A perhaps telling statement from Hounsfield’s presidential address to the Institute in October, 1928, was widely re-quoted: “Integrity in business is analogous to sportsmanship in the playing fields.” After 16 years with Trojan, he resigned in 1930…

He went back to inventing, designing and making a range of test equipment and a very successful camp-bed, remaining in business until he died in 1957. In 1942, he had published some contentious ideas about a post-war car for the masses, saying it should have a built-in road tax and insurance metre (£1 per 1,000 miles), which would either sound a bell and light-up an external yellow warning lamp when speed exceeded 35 m.p.h. or at least jack-up the car’s taxation and insurance rate.

Trojan also built go-karts, the Trokart. This was my first kart back in the early 1960s. Mine was fitted with a Clinton A490 engine. Great fun.

I have a vivid childhood memory of being in a workshop with my grandfather (who was a sheet metal worker) possibly/probably at Trojans (Purley Way, Croydon) with a McLaren F1 car. It would have been in the 1970s. Would this make any sense to anyone?

Of course, they also made the customer McLaren Can-Am cars, the M8F I think, and Brooke Bond were famous for their red Trojan vans.

I was at a classic car show at the Amberley Museum a few years ago and there was a Trojan tourer there. The period advertising with the car explained, by comparing its maintenance costs and the costs of buying a pair of shoes and having them re-soled every year was proof that owning a Trojan was cheaper than walking.