Maltby's Motor Works

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Maltby's Motor Works
Maltby's Motor Works & Garage
legal form Limited Company
founding 1899
resolution circa 1939
Seat Sandgate , UK
Branch Body shop

Maltby's Motor Works or Maltby's Motor Works & Garage ( Maltby for short ) was a British bodywork company that manufactured bodies for buses , trucks and cars from 1912 to the 1930s .

Company history

The company was founded by John Hugh Maltby. In 1899 he started his own business as a blacksmith in the southern English community of Sandgate ( Kent ). Since 1902 he expanded the business to include a car repair shop and an automobile trade. In 1912, Maltby produced the first superstructures for buses, and after the end of the First World War , commercial vehicle superstructures too. Maltby also had dealerships for Buick , Crossley , Humber , Minerva and Morris .

In 1926, Maltby sold his company to M. Redfern, the CEO of the then independent whiskey maker Johnnie Walker . Redfern let Maltby's Motor Works run through his sons Francis and Henry. They kept the car trade, but gave up the manufacture of commercial vehicle bodies. Instead, from 1929 onwards, Maltby produced car bodies. The company, now trading as Maltby's Motor Works & Garage, took a two-pronged approach: It mainly produced standardized special bodies on behalf of various manufacturers that were sold through the regular dealer networks; this affected chassis from Armstrong Siddeley , Humber, Lagonda , Morris and Wolseley , among others . Maltby primarily offered convertible bodies that were adapted to the respective chassis. Maltby developed an automatic convertible top mechanism in the 1930s which was marketed as Maltby Redfern . In addition to this commissioned work, Maltby also created individual structures that were tailored to customer requirements. For the most part, however, these were not completely independent designs, but rather modifications of the standard structures. Most recently, Maltby also converted standard bodies from other manufacturers into convertibles. With this broad lineup, Maltby was considered one of the most successful British bodywork manufacturers of the 1930s and was one of Jensen's competitors .

The end of operations came before the outbreak of World War II , although the circumstances have not been clearly clarified. According to a source, Henry Refern sold the company to competitor Caffyns after his brother Francis Redfern died of a car accident. Another source dates the sale to Caffyns to 1935 and the accidental death of Francis Redfern to 1940. Caffyns initially used the Maltby premises for the manufacture of their own superstructures; later repairs were primarily carried out here. With the takeover by Caffyns, the body production at Maltby ended. The factory facilities were destroyed in a fire in 1960.

literature

  • Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 . Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Convertible body for an Oldsmobile from 1937; see. www.conceptcarz.com (accessed May 2, 2017).
  2. ^ A b Nick Walker: AZ of British Coachbuilders 1919-1960 . Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , p. 136.
  3. ↑ Maltby's Motor Works on the website www.carsceneinternational.com/ (accessed on May 2, 2017).