Wolseley Autocar Nummer Eins
1896 · Three Wheeler with Flat Twin Engine · Work 262 of 1,871
The Wolseley Autocar Number One outside the Birmingham works, three wheels with one steered wheel at the front, horizontal twin engine low in the tubular frame, belt drive, tiller steering.
- What it was used for
- Herbert Austin had been Company Engineer of the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company in Birmingham since March 1895, a works that made sheep-shearing machinery. The company only gave him permission on 19 May 1896 to build two cars, both three-wheelers. The car was shown publicly at the National Cycle Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in December 1896. It had three wheels, not four; the first four-wheeled Wolseley was sold in November 1899. Whether it found a buyer is disputed: the Wolseley Register writes that one was ordered at the Crystal Palace and sold for 100 pounds; Grace's Guide records that although advertised for sale, none were sold. The best-documented use is a journey by Austin himself: in June 1898 he drove it 250 miles from Birmingham to Rhyl and back. He then dropped the three-wheeler for a four-wheeled design. The man behind this car left Wolseley in 1905, taking senior staff with him, and later built the Austin Seven at Longbridge.
- What was new
- Not an original design to begin with: over the winter of 1895-96 Austin made his own version of a Léon Bollée three-wheeler he had seen in Paris. What set it apart from the model was not the number of wheels but the structure. Grace's Guide and the Wolseley Car Club of NSW describe a frame of steel tubing with triangulated bracing, independent rear suspension using swinging brackets with springs enclosed in cylinders, and a transverse flat-twin of 2 hp amidships under the seats. Andy Plummer records for the Wolseley Register that the later move away from horizontal engines at Wolseley followed from fashion and transmission requirements rather than engineering obsolescence, and that the new vertical engines carried Austin's features forward. Meanwhile Lanchester was working on his four-wheeler a few kilometres away.