Description
On the first week of the year 1900, if you picked up your weekly edition of ‘The English Mechanic Magazine’ you would have seen something slight different, but extremely exciting. You have always wanted and dreamed of buying your own motorcar, but they are impossibly expense to buy. But there on the first page of your weekly magazine sits an article that reads ‘A Small Motor Car and how to build it’.
This was not the DIY job for the faint hearted. Readers would continue to receive weekly articles in their magazine on how to construct this small 3HP belt drive motor car which went down to incredible detail, for instance how to make the pattern to cast the cylinder head and once cast how to machine and bore the cylinder on your lathe at home. This remarkable step by step guide went on for 31 weekly editions with the end result being a motorcar able to carry two people comfortably and reliably.
Providing you kept up to date with this weekly subscription, by the first week of August 1900, you would have a running chassis and were pushing on to building the body. The mastermind behind this completely new automotive principle was non other than a 29 year old engineer Thomas Hyler White of Goswell Road, London.
Hyler-White was a man of poor health, suffering from consumption yet nevertheless his endeavours into the creation of a home built motor vehicle were not limited to just the 1900 3HP English Mechanic you see here today. He also produced a step by step guide in 1899 for a petrol tricycle and continued with varying success to produce these guides for steam and petrol vehicles up until 1913, where poor health stopped his progression. He died in 1920, aged only 48 years old.
Against all odds, two English Mechanic cars survive today, this being the earliest example worldwide. The car first surfaced in 1921 when it was found in a field in Kent by record breaking cyclist and landlord of the ‘White Lion’ Pub, Cobham, C. A. Smith. The car has been sat for a long time, which was evident due to the fact that a tree had grown through the back part of the chassis and had to be cut down in order for the car to be moved. For many years, no one knew what the car was and presumed it to be some type of Benz motorcar.
Quite incredibly, Smith got the car running with minimal fuss and entered it into the 1928 London to Brighton Run (driven by E. G Blake) still believing it was a Benz. Sadly it didn’t not complete the journey that year but did much better in 1929 when ‘The Autocar’ recorded that it arrived in Brighton at 1. 10pm in the rain. The car arrived safely yet again in 1930, when it was driven by HJF Parsons, he drove it again in 1932 but a water pump failure ended proceedings.
Ownership obviously passed to HJF Parsons in 1932 and he decided that his Veteran was probably not a Benz after all. When he entered it in the 1933 LTBR it was now dubbed a French Hurtu from 1897 and it was continued to be presumed this Marque until long after WW2. In the early 1950s the car was acquired by Veteran Car Guru Reg Taverner who solved the puzzle as to the cars true identity, after reading through the English Mechanic instructions from 1900. Reg sold the car at the end of the 1950s and after hours of negotiations that lasted until 1am in the morning, a deal was agreed and the car was sold to a Mr Louis Holland, who drove it under its correct guise on the 1959 London to Brighton Run.
In 1965, the car was acquired by George Dorrington who would continue to drive the car to Brighton every year in November. The car stayed in Dorrington family ownership for more than 50 years, until it was sold in 2018. One incredible chance meeting happened in the Dorrington family ownership, when on the 1972 London to Brighton Run an 85 year old gentleman approached the car whilst stopped at a garage in Redhill. The man, named ‘Mortlock’ was a boyhood friend of Hyler-White and told stories of the pair building petrol powered bicycles in their youth.
Now dated by the VCC as a 1900 English Mechanic car, this incredible piece of British engineering is available for purchase, a truly captivating history file and story line accompanying the car. Today it is also fitted with Electric Starting and is ready for a new owner to write their piece into this remarkable little cars history.
