Mayfair Carriage

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Mayfair Carriage Company
legal form Limited Company
founding 1924
resolution circa 1970
Seat London , UK
Branch Body shop

Mayfair Carriage Company (initially: Progressive Coach & Motor Body Company ) was a British coachbuilder , who in the period between the World Wars individual bodies for automobiles of the upper class made. Mayfair is best known for numerous elegant bodies on Alvis chassis.

Company history

Alvis Speed ​​20 SC with Mayfair body
Bentley 4½ liter tourer with Mayfair body

Mayfair Motor Carriage goes back to the body manufacturer Motor Car Industries based in the London borough of Kilburn . In 1924 the owners of Motor Car Industries separated. One of them left the company and founded a new company in a neighboring district, which initially operated as the Kelvin Carriage and from 1925 was called Carlton Carriage . His former business partner took over the workshop of Motor Car Industries in Kilburn and initially continued operations there under the name Progressive Coach & Motor Body. In 1929 the company finally renamed Mayfair Carriage, although there was no real reference to the upscale London district of the same name . 1934 Mayfair relocated the company headquarters in the district The Hyde ( Borough of Barnet ) in north-west London; the previous plant in Kilburn was taken over by the newly founded body construction company Corinthian Coachwork .

In the first few years Progressive Coach mainly manufactured superstructures for Buick and Minerva chassis . After being renamed Mayfair, the company focused on British manufacturers. Mayfair started with bodies for the Humber and Wolseley . From 1931 there was a relationship with the upper-class manufacturer Alvis Cars, for whom Mayfair regularly produced limousines, coupé and sports car bodies in the following years. There were also numerous superstructures for Rolls-Royce ; one source speaks of a total of around 400 bodies. In addition, individual designs for chassis from Armstrong-Siddeley , Bentley , Lagonda and Mercedes-Benz were created . Mayfair's designs were widely regarded as exceptionally elegant and dignified.

With the outbreak of World War II , Mayfair stopped manufacturing high-quality automobile bodies. After the end of the war, two individual bodies were made for HRG ; Incidentally, the company concentrated entirely on the manufacture of truck bodies, which, however, ended in the late 1950s. From 1959 Mayfair was a pure repair company for passenger cars and trucks, at times automobiles were also traded. Mayfair ceased operations in the 1970s.

The name Mayfair Carriage Company is used today by a taxi and rental car company in Oxford that was founded in 2003 and has no relation to the former body manufacturer.

literature

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

Web links

Commons : Mayfair Coachwork  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nick Walker: AZ of British Coachbuilders 1919-1960 . Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , pp. 90 f, 139, 146.
  2. ↑ a b Description of a Mayfair-clad Mercedes-Benz 500K (1934) with a brief description of the company's history on the website www.bonhams.com (accessed on June 24, 2015).
  3. ↑ Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 . Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , pp. 139 f.