Beschreibung:

1903 WOLSELEY 10HP REAR-ENTRANCE TONNEAU Registration No. XKO 61A Chassis No. 319 Engine No. 311 Yellow and black with black upholstery Engine: front-mounted horizontal parallel twin, 4½ x 5 ins. bore and stroke, 2.6 litres, water-cooled with pump, trembler-coil ignition, drip-feed lubrication; Gearbox: Primary drive by Reynolds, silent chain to four speeds and reverse, cone clutch, final drive by side chains; Suspension: front and rear, semi-elliptic leaf springs; Brakes: rear-wheel internal-expanding brakes and external contracting transmission brake. Wooden artillery wheels with beaded-edge tyres front, and solid rubber tyres rear. Right hand drive. For the ten years from 1896 while the Wolseley Companies were experimenting with and then producing motorcars, there was one man who drove the whole enterprise forwards - Herbert Austin. Even when in 1901 the armaments firm Vickers Sons & Maxim bought the Wolseley motorcar business, set up the Wolseley Tool & Motor Car Co, and acquired and re-equipped the Adderley Park works to the east of Birmingham city centre for car production, Austin still presided, even if his title was only ever Works or General Manager. After experimenting with a couple of different configuration tricars Austin devised a four-wheeled voiturette with a front-mounted horizontal single-cylinder engine. This had adequate water-cooling capacity with the radiator forming the 'bonnet' sides, primary drive by belt (that also served as a clutch) to a mid-car three speed gearbox, and final drive was by side-chains. The vehicle was tiller-steered and had relatively simple controls by the standards of the day, and this prototype performed well enough in the 1900 Thousand Miles Trial. The design that owed little to the ideas of others was put into production with the only major changes being a cone clutch and wheel steering - 5hp singles and 10hp twins of this pattern being marketed from 1901. At the end of 1902 The Motor-Car Journal reported that Wolseley 'has orders on hand for over 800 cars of different types, representing a value of about £300,000. The output of the works is now actually ten cars per week.' Wolseley was just one of the two English manufacturers (Napier was the other) that exhibited at Paris Salon in December 1902, the first occasion that this had happened and described by The Autocar as being of 'historic importance'. It was at the Salon that this car was ordered, and the Wolseley Works Records show that it left the Adderley Park factory on the 26th February 1903 to the order of H.N.B. Good, The Abbey, Sutton Courtney, Berkshire. When the registering of cars was introduced under the 1903 Motor Car Act, the Wolseley '10hp Tonneau, yellow & black' was allocated the index mark BL-2 by Berkshire County Council. By the 1950s the car formed part of the collection of the Nuffield Organisation - William Morris yet to be Lord Nuffield, having bought Wolseley Motors in 1927. Somewhat surprisingly the Wolseley was displayed at 'Morris Garages' - the MG premises not being the most obvious place to house a historic vehicle from the pioneer days. Whilst with the Nuffield Organisation the Wolseley participated only in the 1962 London to Brighton Run and eight years later it changed hands. Its first 'Brighton' in the present ownership was the 1971 event and the Wolseley was last seen on the A23 in November for the Centenary Run of 1996. In the second edition of his monumental book Motor Vehicles and Motors (1906) the author, respected consulting engineer Worby Beaumont, wrote about Wolseley: 'The success of these cars is due to the thoroughly good design, material and workmanship of all the parts'. Beaumont endorsed his opinion by long-term ownership of a 1902 10hp - the car now in the keeping of the Veteran Car Club. The late Anthony Bird, who was one of the better informed motoring historians since he actually drove the cars that he wrote so well about, said in his 1966 'Profile': The Horizontal-engined