Willowbrook Coachbuilders

Willowbrook Coachbuilders Willowbrook International
legal form	Limited Company
founding	1927
resolution	1993
Seat	Loughborough , UK
Branch	Body shop

Willowbrook Coachbuilders Ltd. (later: Willowbrook International ) was a British car body manufacturer that manufactured superstructures for buses in the 20th century and occasionally also clad passenger cars.

Company history

Willowbrook double decker buses on a Bristol K chassis (1939)

Willowbrook superstructure for an AEC chassis (Reliance, 1970)

Willowbrook takes over Stokes & Holt Ltd., which was founded in Leicester in 1900 . back. Stokes & Holt mainly manufactured baskets and wickerwork. In 1910 the company expanded its operations to include the manufacture of vehicle bodies; the workshops were in Loughborough , a suburb of Leicester. From 1925 Stokes & Holt marketed its vehicle bodies under the name Willowbrook. In order to make the bodywork department formally independent, Stokes & Holt founded the subsidiary Willowbrook Coachbuilders Ltd in 1927 .

Initially, Willowbrook mainly manufactured bodies for Chevrolet and Bedford chassis , mostly smaller buses with one floor. From around 1935, however, double-decker buses were also built on chassis from AEC , Bristol and Leyland . Willowbrook's customers were mainly independent bus operators. During World War II , Willowbrook manufactured troop transports for the British Army .

After the end of the war, Willowbrook continued to manufacture bus bodies. The company offered a standard body called Viking , which was suitable for different chassis and could be modified according to customer requirements. At times there was a close relationship with Guy Motors . Customers included the Birmingham & Midland Motor Omnibus Company (BMMO) and British Electric Traction (BET).

In September 1958 Willowbrook was taken over by its previous competitor Duple . Duple merged production in Leicester. In the first few years, Duple continued to manufacture Willowbrooks Viking superstructures, later the superstructures were standardized. For several years the company used the Willowbrook name for all double decker bodies, while the smaller bodies were marketed as Duple Midland .

In 1971, Duple partner George Hughes acquired the naming rights to Willowbrook. The company Willowbrook International was founded . In 1972 Willowbrook began manufacturing a new bus body called the Expressway , of which around 150 were made. A small model called the Spaceway was built only 93 times in four years.

In 1984 Willowbrook stopped manufacturing new bus bodies. From 1985 onwards, the company worked on the revision of older buses for which new bodies or parts of bodies were manufactured. In 1993, Willowbrook finally ceased operations.

Willowbrook and Alvis

The only car body from Willowbrook: Alvis TC 108 / G (1956–1958)

From 1956 to 1958 Willowbrook also produced bodies for passenger cars . The British car maker in the luxury class Alvis Cars which short his former bodybuilder previously Mulliners of Birmingham had lost commissioned Willowbrook with the production of plant bodies of the newly introduced Alvis TC 108 / G . The body design came from the Swiss bodybuilder Graber , which also supplied Willowbrook with the wooden molds for the sheet metal. The Willowbrook superstructures were extremely expensive, but the craftsmanship was of inferior quality. In two and a half years, fewer than 20 bodies were made for Alvis.

The production of the TC 108 / G ended in 1958. According to a source, the Duple management canceled the contract for the production of the TC 108 / G, so that Alvis again needed a new body manufacturer. Other sources assume that the connection between Alvis and Willowbrook was only designed for the production of 25 vehicles from the start and that Alvis terminated the contract prematurely due to qualitative defects in the Willowbrook bodies. The successor model Alvis TD 21 , also designed by Graber, received bodies that were assembled at Park Ward . Willowbrook did not manufacture any other car bodies.

literature

• 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 . Herridge & Sons,) Shebbear 2007, ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 .
• Willowbrook - Swiss Inspiration Combines With British Craftmanship. In: The Autocar of July 26, 2957.

Web links

Commons : Willowbrook Coachbuilders  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 . Herridge & Sons, Shebbear 2007, ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , p. 204.
2. ^ Dieter Günther: Swiss Connection . In: Oldtimer Market . Special issue no. 14: "Luxury, performance and four seats: Gran Turismo - the big coupés". 1994, p. 17.
3. ^ Rainer W. Schlegelmilch, Hartmut Lehbrink: English sports car . Könemann, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-8290-7449-2 , p. 23.
4. ^ John Fox: Alvis Cars 1946-1967: The Post-War Years , Amberley Publishing, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4456-5631-1 , p. 45.