When Noel Macklin sold Invicta, he started again in 1933 with Railton, based at the Fairmile works in Cobham, Surrey. The name came from Reid Railton, the engineer behind land speed record cars, who received a royalty on every car sold.
Railton’s idea was to combine British coachwork and handling with a powerful, inexpensive American chassis and engine. The first cars used the 4-litre, 100bhp eight-cylinder Hudson Terraplane chassis, and later ones the Hudson Eight, giving performance that few British cars of the time could match for the price. Around 1,379 Railton Eights were built, along with 81 six-cylinder cars and 51 of the small Railton Ten.
In 1939 the Hudson Motor Car Company bought the business and moved production to Brentford in west London, but the Second World War brought it to an end. In 1989 designer William Towns revived the name for the F28 Fairmile and F29 Claremont, aluminium-bodied convertibles based on the Jaguar XJS, but only two prototypes were completed.
