Two small women, or one very big Humber?

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It's not unusual to come across a Humber at a vintage car rally in Britain, but we almost always expect to see either the small 9/20, the medium-sized 12/25 or the larger 14/40. All will, of course, be painted dark blue, dark red or the famous Humber Mole. It therefore came as quite a surprise to us to stumble upon this photograph, which clearly shows a Humber but of a much larger size than we have seen before.

The photograph is very crisp and appears somewhat staged, giving the impression that it could be a professional photograph shot for publicity purposes, but there's one thing which makes us doubt that, and that's the fact that the driver is a woman. As we know, woman drivers were quite a rarity at the time, and there were few serious attempts to market cars towards women until the 1930s. Generally speaking, if a women did decide she wanted to go motoring, it would typically be with something small and light, not a cumbersome saloon like this Humber.

If her husband has allowed her to borrow it for the day, we're impressed both by her enthusiasm and his liberality. She certainly looks at ease behind the wheel. If the Humber is, in fact, her own car, we're even more impressed still, though we're not sure why she'd want such a large car unless she had a lot of children to transport. Then again, the woman on the left has a remarkably mischievous expression on her face, so perhaps they have 'borrowed' the car in one of the looser senses of the word...

The car, we believe, is a Humber 15.9hp, a brand-new model for the post-Kaiser War period which was built from 1919 to 1924 and was, we would suppose, Humber's largest offering at the time. It would have been a very expensive car and we would imagine that few were sold, which would account for why few survive today.

It's a particularly handsome car, and a look at the intricate upholstery in the doors shows that it conforms to Humber's famously high standards of finish. The familiar vee-shaped screen is present, which gives it a distinctive and rather dynamic look, but the beautifully curvaceous coachwork is most unlike the square-edged saloons we're used to seeing from later in the vintage period. All in all, we have to congratulate the ladies for choosing a car of taste and refinement.

If only we knew more details, like 'who', 'where' and 'when'. The EH number plate points us towards Stoke-on-Trent, in England's industrial Midlands, but that's all we have to go on.

Words: Zack Stiling
 

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