The naval engineer John Isaac Thornycroft formed the Thornycroft Steam Carriage and Van Company in 1896 and built a one-ton steam van with a marine-launch-type boiler; a modified version became a very early self-propelled dust cart for Chiswick council. His first petrol vehicle followed in 1902, and by 1907 the company had fully moved to internal combustion engines. Thornycroft’s steam wagon won the War Office’s 1901 lorry trials, although Foden’s was widely thought faster and more economical.
The Basingstoke factory supplied nearly 5,000 vehicles for the First World War. When the War Office introduced a subsidy scheme in 1924 for approved vehicles, the A1 chassis was chosen. From 1931 Thornycroft gave its range descriptive names, and in the Second World War it designed the Terrapin and other military vehicles. In 1948 the vehicle company was renamed Transport Equipment (Thornycroft) to avoid confusion with the shipbuilder.
Thornycroft was known for multi-axle fire-engine chassis for airports, such as the Nubian, and the Antar tank transporter. AEC’s parent Associated Commercial Vehicles took it over in March 1961, Leyland took over ACV the next year, and vehicle production at Basingstoke ended in 1969, moving to Scammell at Watford. The Thornycroft six-speed gearbox lived on in AEC, Albion and Leyland trucks.
