Brainsby Woollard

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Brainsby
Brainsby-Woollard
legal form Limited Company
founding 1905
resolution circa 1936
Reason for dissolution insolvency
Seat Peterborough , UK
Branch Body shop

Brainsby-Woollard (initially: Brainsby ) was a British manufacturer of special bodies for passenger cars.

Company history

The company was founded in 1905 as Thomas Brainsby & Sons in Peterborough ( Cambridgeshire ). The bodies for upscale brands such as Crossley , FIAT , Hotchkiss , Minerva and Rolls-Royce were built .

Between 1924 and 1929 the company exhibited annually at the London Motor Show in the Olympic Halls ; a reliable indicator of major activities for coachbuilders at that time.

Around 1929, Brainsby-Woollard Ltd. went out of business . emerged. Apparently it was a partnership between Brainsby and Charles Harry Woollard . While Thomas Brainsby & Sons increasingly lost importance, Brainsby-Woollard was mainly active as an agent for other coachbuilders, with Charles Woollard acquiring the orders. As a rule, it was a question of smaller series, which were then not built in-house, but went to subcontractors for execution. Brainsby-Woollard does not seem to have had its own production. The clients were mostly automobile manufacturers or large automobile agencies. This was common practice and led to custom-made or small-batch assemblies being shipped with the client's label, so that it is often unclear who actually built a particular assembly . The most important subcontractors were the respected John Charles & Co. , who dressed Alvis , Bentley , Lagonda and Stutz for Brainsby-Woollard , and the Lancefield Coachworks ; the latter body was almost exclusively Rolls-Royce. Both companies no longer existed after 1936.

Very few Brainsby and Brainsby-Woollard bodies are known. Exceptions are a landaulet body, which was originally built for a Minerva chassis and is now mounted on the Rolls-Royce 40/50 hp "Silver Ghost" with chassis number 1204, as well as a Close Coupled Cabriolet (with tight seating) Bugatti Type 50 Chassis No. 50144. It is unclear whether the latter was realized at Brainsby or elsewhere.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Nick Walker: AZ of British Coachbuilders (1997)
  2. ↑ conceptcarz.com: Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost # 1204 (1910)
  3. ↑ conceptcarz.com: Bugatti Type 50 Cabriolet # 50144 (1934)

literature

  • Nick Walker: AZ of British Coachbuilders, 1919-1960. Bay View Books, Bideford, Devon, UK 1997, ISBN 1-870979-93-1 . (English)
  • David Culshaw, Peter Horrobin: The Complete Catalog of British Cars 1895-1975. Veloce Publishing, Dorchester 1997, ISBN 1-874105-93-6 . (English)
  • Lawrence Dalton: Those Elegant Rolls Royce. revised edition. Dalton-Watson, London, England 1978. (English)
  • Richard v. Frankenberg, Marco Matteucci: History of the Automobile. Sigloch Service Edition / STIG, Torino 1973.
  • Hans-Otto Neubauer (ed.): Chronicle of the automobile. Chronik Verlag in Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 1994, ISBN 3-570-14338-4 .
  • Harald H. Linz, Halwart Schrader: The great automobile encyclopedia. 100 years of history. 2500 brands from 65 countries. 2nd Edition. BLV Buchverlag Munich / Vienna / Zurich 1992, ISBN 978-3-405-12974-3 .
  • GN Georgano (Ed.): Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars, 1885 to the Present. 2nd Edition. Dutton Press, New York 1973, ISBN 0-525-08351-0 . (English)
  • Ferdinand Hediger: Classic Cars 1919–1939. Hallwag-Verlag, Ostfildern 1998, ISBN 3-444-10348-4 .

Web links