J. Gurney Nutting

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J. Gurney Nutting & Company Ltd.
Gurney Nutting Ltd.
legal form Limited Company
founding 1919
resolution 1945
Reason for dissolution Takeover by Jack Barclay
Seat London , UK
Branch Body shop

J. Gurney Nutting (later: Gurney Nutting ) was a British car body manufacturer who manufactured individual bodywork , especially for luxury automobiles, in the period between the world wars. Gurney Nutting's customers included several members of the British royal family. The company temporarily had the status of supplier to the royal court.

Company history

Bentley Speed ​​6 with Gurney-Nutting body according to Weymann patent (1930)
Rolls-Royce 20-25 Saloon from Gurney Nutting
Bentley 4¼ liter Sedanca Coupé (1937)
Bentley Mark VI Sedanca "Teadrop Coupé"
Duesenberg J Speedster by Gurney Nutting (1935)

The beginnings

Unlike many other British bodywork companies such as Barker , Hooper or Rippon , Gurney Nutting did not have a long tradition as a carriage manufacturer when it started producing automobile bodies in 1919.

The company was founded by John Gurney Nutting (1871-10 February 1946). Gurney Nutting had run a construction company and a joinery in London during the First World War and had made considerable fortunes during this period, mainly through government contracts. After the end of the war, there was a boom in the automotive industry in Great Britain, which also resulted in the establishment of numerous new bodywork companies. At that time it was customary for the automobile manufacturers to only produce the chassis and possibly also the engines, while the superstructures were manufactured by external suppliers. These either worked individually on behalf of customers or dealers, or they supplied more or less standardized bodies as a subcontractor of the chassis manufacturer.

John Gurney Nutting picked up on this development when he expanded his business to include bodywork in 1919. The aim was to manufacture high-quality individual structures according to customer requirements (in English: “Bespoke Coachwork”). The company was initially based in the London borough of Croydon , in 1924 it moved to Chelsea after a fire in the previous facilities .

Concentration on the upper class

From the start, Gurney Nutting focused on upper-class chassis. The first bodies for Daimler were built as early as 1921, and from 1925 Gurney Nutting dressed Rolls-Royce chassis . Chassis from Alvis , Armstrong-Siddeley , Lagonda and Talbot were added later. The strongest connection, however, was with Bentley : Gurney Nutting had already bodyworked one of the first Bentley models in 1920, and by the end of the 1920s the company had become Bentley's second most important body supplier after Vanden Plas . In 1931 alone Gurney Nutting produced 360 bodies for Bentley chassis.

The Gurney Nutting Style

One of the special features of Gurney Nutting was the restrained and elegant style of the bodies. Most of them were designed in the 1920s by Albert Francis ("AF") McNeil, a designer who had previously worked for rival company Cunard . In 1936 McNeil moved to Gurney Nuttings competitor James Young ; his successor at Gurney Nutting was his previous assistant John Blatchley , who shaped the style of the brand until the outbreak of World War II . Blatchley was a designer at Rolls-Royce in the 1960s.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, Gurney Nutting manufactured many superstructures based on the Weymann patent. They had a wooden frame and were covered with lacquered synthetic leather. At that time, the Prince of Wales - later King Edward VIII - was one of Gurney Nutting's clients. At the beginning of the 1930s, Gurney Nutting was appointed purveyor to the royal court.

Avoidance of the Weymann patent: "Highest elegance"

At the beginning of the 1930s, customer interest in Weymann bodies declined sharply. They were quiet and comfortable, but due to their design only allowed more or less straight lines; Round shapes, which were increasingly in demand since the beginning of the new decade, could only be produced to a very limited extent with stretched synthetic leather. Gurney Nutting then switched completely to metal bodies. The structures created during this time are considered to be the most elegant in the company's history; his often showed "highest elegance". This also includes the Sedanca coupés that Gurney Nutting made for the London Rolls Royce dealer HR Owen and which have become a trademark of the company.

War, sale and shutdown

At the beginning of the Second World War , body production at Gurney Nutting ended. The company manufactured boats during the war.

After the end of the war, body production was initially not resumed. John Gurney Nutting, who had previously run the business, was unable to continue operating the company for health reasons. Before he died in February 1946, he sold his company to the London Rolls-Royce dealer Jack Barclay, who had already taken over Gurney Nutting's competitor James Young before the outbreak of war. Jack Barclay merged Gurney Nutting's production facility and his own workshop in the following years for cost reasons, while the sheet metal work was carried out at James Young in Bromley . At the first British International Motor Show at the Olympia , Gurney Nutting was represented with its own stand, where the company showed a Bentley Mark VI with Sedanca body. After that there was no longer any regular body production under the name Gurney Nutting.

Trivia

In the film Never Say Never (1983), Sean Connery drives a Bentley 4¼ liter with a 1937 Drophead body by Gurney Nutting in the role of James Bond .

literature

  • Lawrence Dalton: Coachwork on Rolls Royce 1906-1939 . Dalton Watson 1975, ISBN 0901564133 .
  • Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 . Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 .

Web links

Commons : Gurney Nutting  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 . Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , p. 154.
  2. ↑ Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 . Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , p. 186.
  3. ↑ a b c story of Gurney Nuttings on the website www.coachbuild.com
  4. ↑ Description of the vehicle with images on the website www.jamesbondlifestyle.com (accessed on July 23, 2015).