Albany Carriage

Albany Carriage Co.
legal form	Limited Company
founding	circa 1920
resolution	1930
Reason for dissolution	insolvency
Seat	London , UK
management	Norman Wallis

Albany Carriage (abbreviated Albany ) was a British manufacturer of automobile bodies , who worked in the 1920s. Albany built small series and one-offs. The company achieved lasting fame through the extraordinarily shaped Airway Saloon based on Lancia .

Company history

The Albany Carriage Company's founding date cannot be found in the available sources. Before 1920, there was no documented body shop.

At the beginning of the 1920s, Albany was based in the city ​​of St Albans , north of London . In 1924 the seat was moved to the London borough of Hanwell ( Borough of Ealing ), where Albany moved into the halls of a former tram depot. During this time the company was led by Norman Wallis. Under his leadership, it acquired the license to manufacture Weymann bodies in the mid-1920s , which Albany subsequently produced mainly on behalf of Alvis Cars . From 1927 there was a business relationship with the London automobile dealer Charles Follett, who commissioned some bodies for Lancia chassis from Albany. It gave Albany temporary nationwide attention, but it did not benefit the company in the long term. In the following year, Albany ran into economic difficulties. After Albany's manager Norman Wallis died unexpectedly in November 1927, Alvis terminated the contract for the production of Weymann bodies in early 1928. Until 1930, Albany kept afloat with repairs; In addition, the company also manufactured some bus bodies. In 1930 Albany finally ceased operations completely. The body shop company AP Compton & Co. then took over the factory in Hanwell.

Albany bodies

Albany and Alvis

Early Alvis emblem

In the second half of the 1920s, Albany's focus was on the manufacture of Weymann bodies for Alvis Cars.

Like most British car manufacturers at the time, Alvis did not have its own body shop. Instead, independent specialist companies were commissioned to manufacture bodies, which were mostly produced in smaller series and sold as quasi-factory bodies through Alvis' dealer network. Since the mid-1920s, in addition to conventional steel structures, Alvis had also been offering bodies based on the Weymann patent, which were in great demand at times. They consisted of wooden frames, which were covered on the outside with lacquered artificial leather. Albany was one of the few specialist companies that had acquired the necessary license from Charles Weymann to build such bodies. Around 1925 Albany received an order from Alvis to produce Weymann bodies for the 12/50 series . The business relationship lasted until December 1927. At that time, Alvis had succeeded in developing its own body system, which, like the plastic-covered superstructures from Weymann, reduced torsion and noise in the superstructure, but was significantly lighter and cheaper to manufacture. This system, called Alvista , was ready for series production in the second half of 1927. Because Alvis was no longer dependent on the Weymann constructions that required a license, the company terminated all contracts for the manufacture of Weymann bodies in early 1928. Albany was also affected. The Alvista superstructures were instead to 1930 exclusively at Cross & Ellis made.

Albany and Lancia

Weymann bodies for the Lancia Lambda

On behalf of the London Lancia dealer Charles Follett, who thought the factory-made Italian bodies were unattractive, Albany designed seven different bodies for the Lancia Lambda , including convertibles and sedans . The technical basis were Lambdas of generations 7 and 8, which - in contrast to the self-supporting generations 1 to 5 - had a separate chassis and thus allowed individual bodies. Some, but not all, Albany bodies for the Lambda were designed according to the Weymann patent.

The Lambda Airway Saloon

Lancia Lambda Airway Saloon (1927)

Wide tower of the revised version

The most extraordinary and still known variant is the Airway Saloon from 1927, which takes up design elements from aircraft. The design goes back to the architect Joseph Emberton , who was inspired by the lines of the Vickers Vimy bomber . The outstanding design feature, in addition to the sloping windshield, is the sloping roof line. A glazed elevation protrudes from it in the middle, reminiscent of a tower . It creates the necessary headroom for the passenger in the rear of the vehicle. In the first version from 1927 the tower was very narrow; later the elevation was widened significantly. When it comes to the instrumentation, Emberton also took a look at airplanes: the dashboard contains displays for wind speed and inclination as well as an altimeter and a compass . The structure consists of a frame made of ash wood; some parts of the superstructure are covered with colored artificial leather. The Airway Saloon was exhibited in a two-tone red and ivory livery at the British International Motor Show in London in October 1927 .

The British Lancia importer, Curtis Automobile Company Ltd., announced a series production of the Airway Saloon and quoted a sales price of £ 945. It is unclear whether the Airway Saloon was actually produced in series. Today's sources assume that Albany only produced two exhibits, one of which still exists today. One of the cars was sold to Australia where it continued to attract attention.

Emberton's airway design was influential. It was one of the earliest examples of the aerodynamic wave that hit automotive design in the 1930s and that was also broken down into mass-produced vehicles. Three years later , Gurney Nutting designed a structure very similar to the Airway Saloon - but without a tower - for a Bentley Speed ​​Six , which became known as the Bentley Blue Train , on behalf of Woolf Barnato .

Other superstructures

There is evidence of an individual Albany body for a Packard chassis, which is said to have been produced on behalf of the British Packard importer.

literature

• WB: Chatting with Charles Follett . Motorsport Magazine, October 1972, p. 34.
• James Taylor: A – Z of British Bus Bodies , Crowood Press, 2013, ISBN 978-1-84797-639-0 .
• Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 , Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 .

Web links

Commons : Albany Carriage  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ James Taylor: A – Z of British Bus Bodies , Crowood Press, 2013, ISBN 978-1-84797-639-0 .
2. ↑ Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 , Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , p. 99.
3. ↑ Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 , Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , p. 187.
4. ↑ For the Alvista superstructures cf. George Arthur Oliver: A history of coachbuilding , Cassell, 1962, no ISBN, p. 126.
5. ↑ Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 , Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , p. 74.
6. ↑ Nick Georgano: The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile: Coachbuilding , Routledge, 2001, ISBN 9781136600722 .
7. ^ WB: Chatting with Charles Follett . Motorsport Magazine, October 1972, p. 34.
8. ↑ Paul Schinhofen: Lancia. Innovation and fascination. 100 eventful years , Heel Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-89880-649-7 , p. 19.
9. ↑ ^{a b c} Bruce Lindsay: Airway - “Is it a plane? Is it a car? " The Architect's Lambda. www.lancianews.com, May 28, 2017, accessed October 9, 2019 . 
10. ↑ Overview of the Lambda bodies from Albany on the website www.lanciaclub-oesterreich.at (accessed on October 2, 2019).
11. ↑ Ivan Margolius: Automobiles by architects , Wiley-Academy, 2000, ISBN 9780471607861 , p. 61.
12. Jump up ↑ Barrie Down: Art Deco and British Car Design: The Airline Cars of the 1930s , Veloce Publishing Ltd, 2010, ISBN 9781845844851 .
13. ↑ This Markus Caspers : Designing Motion: Automotive Designers 1890 to 1990 , Birkhauser, Basel / Berlin / Boston 2016, ISBN 978-3-0356-0784-0 , page 50 f.
14. ↑ The Bentley Blue Train on the website www.bentleymotors.com (accessed October 9, 2019).
15. ↑ Classic Car Club of America (ed.): The Classic Car , Volume 46, 1998, p. 5.