Sydney Guy registered Guy Motors on 30 May 1914, the day he left his job as works manager at Sunbeam, and by September was building a new 30 cwt lorry at Fallings Park, Wolverhampton, using a lighter pressed-steel frame that could cross difficult terrain. During the First World War Guy also made aero engines and was the country’s largest maker of depth-charge fuses. In 1919 it launched Britain’s first V8 engine in a luxury 4-litre car, though cars were made in small numbers.
In the 1920s Guy produced the first dropped-frame passenger chassis, in 1924, which let passengers step straight on to buses, and in 1926 the first six-wheeled double-decker buses and trolleybuses. It took over the Star Motor Company in 1928, but Star kept losing money and went into receivership in 1932. The diesel Arab bus chassis of 1933 was Guy’s mainstay for 20 years, and its Arab utility double-decker did wartime service. In 1948 Guy bought Sunbeam Commercial Vehicles and made Sunbeam trolleybuses.
The unreliable Wulfrunian double-decker of 1958 helped drive Guy into receivership in 1961, when Jaguar’s William Lyons bought it. Guy’s Big J lorries of the 1960s were followed by absorption into Leyland, and in August 1982 the Fallings Park plant closed, with the loss of 740 jobs.
