Armstrong Siddeley was formed in May 1919, when the Newcastle-based engineering group Armstrong Whitworth acquired the Coventry-based Siddeley-Deasy Motor Car Company, itself the successor to a business John Davenport Siddeley had originally founded in Coventry in 1902. Siddeley-Deasy had built fine motor cars for the top end of the market, and that focus on quality carried through the new company, which built luxury cars and aircraft engines side by side from its Parkside works in Coventry. The same engineering went into gearboxes for tanks and buses, rocket and torpedo motors, and railcars.
The cars
The first car produced by the new company was a massive machine: the 5-litre, 30hp Thirty, launched at the 1919 merger and kept in production until 1932, an unusually long run that reflected the marque’s traditional, conservative customer base. A smaller 18hp followed in 1922 and a 2-litre 14hp in 1923. 1928 brought the company’s first 15hp six, and 1929 a 12hp car. 1929 was also the year Armstrong Siddeley first offered the Wilson preselector gearbox as an option; it became standard on every car from 1933. By 1930 the range covered 12, 15, 20 and 30hp models, the largest costing £1,450.
Through the 1930s the company’s staid image was reinforced by a range of six-cylinder cars with overhead-valve engines, although a four-cylinder 12hp stayed in production until 1936. The 5-litre six-cylinder Siddeley Special of 1933, costing £950, used an engine made from Hiduminium aluminium alloy. Car production continued at a reduced rate through 1940, and a few cars were assembled in 1941.
Post-war models
In the week the Second World War ended in Europe, Armstrong Siddeley introduced its first post-war models: the Lancaster four-door saloon and the Hurricane drophead coupé. Their names echoed aircraft built by the Hawker Siddeley Group (the name the company adopted in 1935) during the war. Both used a 2-litre six-cylinder (16hp) engine, enlarged to 2.3 litres (18hp) in 1949. From 1949 to 1952 two commercial versions of the 18hp car were built, mainly for export: the Utility Coupé, a conventional coupé utility, and the Station Coupé, effectively a dual-cab vehicle that kept two doors but had two rows of seats for four adults.
From 1953 the company built the Sapphire, with a 3.4-litre six-cylinder engine. The Sapphire 346 carried a bonnet mascot in the shape of a sphinx with Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire jet engines attached, a nod to the aero-engine side of the business. In 1956 the range grew with the 234 (a 2.3-litre four-cylinder) and the 236 (using the older 2.3-litre six). To some loyal customers these “baby Sapphires” looked like a radical departure, but in truth they were too conservative for a period of rapidly developing car design. Jaguar’s unitary-construction 2.4 saloon of 1955 was quicker, significantly cheaper and far better looking, and the 234 and 236 marked the beginning of the end.
The end of car production
The last new model was 1958’s Star Sapphire, with a 4-litre engine and automatic transmission, but it could not save the car business. Manufacturing stopped for good in 1960 when Armstrong Siddeley’s aero-engine interests merged with Bristol Aero Engines to form Bristol Siddeley, and the last car left the Coventry factory that year. The business was later absorbed into Rolls-Royce, which wanted the aircraft and aero-engine work. The Parkside factory has since been demolished; the Armstrong Siddeley name, the remaining spares and the patents, designs, copyrights and trademarks now belong to the Armstrong Siddeley Owners’ Club.
