It can be good advice, in a business context, to “stick to your knitting”. Getting on with the business you know can make sense but it can be commercial suicide.
The car I snapped in Chelsea is a 1958 Armstrong Siddeley Star Sapphire. (See what a petrolhead I am.) It is the last model that once august marque produced. It cost £2,646, had a top speed just shy of 100 mph and, at the Earl’s Court motor show in 1958, beat a Princess limousine and Jaguar Mark IX. You might like to take a look at the interior.
But not everything in the garden was rosy or even peppermint green. The market was smaller in those days but none of their models had a production run of even 1,000 cars. Jaguar was producing cars with a more streamlined shape, lighter and cheaper; the writing was on the wall. In 1960 Armstrong Siddeley built just one Star Sapphire Mk II. In the same year the business was taken over by Rolls-Royce and, in 1972, the car division came into the ownership of the Armstrong Siddeley Owners Club where it still is.
It stuck to its knitting as did other motor car manufacturers, like Hispano-Suiza, the car of choice for Lord Emsworth (although he never drove one, that was Voules’ job) and Simon Templar, better known by his initials as the Saint.
The Wolseley name is remembered now as a restaurant, opened in 2003 in the old Wolseley showroom in Piccadilly by Chris Corbin and Jeremy King. It’s quite successful so they have opened three more: Zédel, Delaunay and, in Islington, Bellanger, all names of extinct but once distinctive motor car marques.
You will mourn the passing of others. My grandmother secured one of the last Morris Minor 1000s off the production line; she wouldn’t drive anything else. Alan Tinsley will remember with affection the Humber Super Snipe, in which I heard Pretty Flamingo (see My Local Art Gallery). Rootes, who made Humbers, did adapt and made Hillman Imps and other smaller models but eventually fell into the hands of Chrysler in 1967.
They had no excuse. Henry Ford had shown them the way with his Model T. In Europe we stuck to our knitting and made low-production cars for high-end buyers. However, the great thing about a market economy is that there is no barrier to competition. So, hello VW beetle, Mini, Citroën 2CV and that little Fiat that would fit in a handbag.
Think carefully about sticking to your knitting but look before you leap, although he who hesitates…and that’s enough sayings for today, over to Chuck Berry.
That’s a beauty. It’s always a pleasure to spot and admire these vintage jalopies.
The late Alan Clark MP had a true passion for motoring; whether he’d like being described as a “petrolhead” is a moot point.
I’d only suggest Back Fire: A Passion For Motoring as terrific reading for those of us who share his enthusiasm.
I just came across this post, hence record-breakingly late reply. The various companies in which the name ‘Siddeley’ has appeared are confusingly numerous, ranging from the ‘Siddeley Autocar Co’, ‘Wolseley-Siddeley Cars’, Siddeley-Deasy Motor Car Co Ltd and finally to ‘Armstrong Siddelely Motors’.
As regards sticking to our knitting, it was fine high-end motors aimed at the few; connolly hide armchair club seats, burr walnut facias, solid, sober cars of the old school but not exactly embracing new tech which tapped into new European markets, mostly shrinking from continental competition or preferring to sell inexpensive cars such as the venerable Morris Minor to former colonies. As you indicate, the writing was on the wall and ignored. We still make fine cars but for other people.
Despite this impending armageddon in both car and motorcycle industries, there were some terrific grand tourers being built in the 50’s, the Star Sapphire was one but perhaps none finer than the mighty Bentley Continental. Alan Clark owned two R type fastbacks (one, ‘Bang Bang’ was stolen) – a coachbuilt, aluminium-bodied, genuine 100MPH cruising beast. My father owned a later Mulliner bodied ‘S’. We would drive non-stop from Herts to visit Granny in Vienna in one hit – 950 miles. Exhausting.
Great stuff, thank you. I wonder if PG Wodehouse’s Mr Mulliner is an homage to your father’s Mulliner S?
Now that would be an interesting homage! Mulliners left Mayfair in 1906 to go to Chiswick and did a lot of early work for Mr Rolls. Rolls-Royce acquired Mulliner in 1959, merging it with Park Ward which they had owned since 1939, forming Mulliner-Park Ward in 1961. Sadly today, Mulliner is no more than the personal commissioning department for Bentley (today owned by *gulp* Volkswagen…), turning the Mulliner name into nothing more than some sort of luxury badge for standard works cars with a personalized interior.
Truly, the world turned upside down.