Armstrong Siddeley

 

Armstrong Siddeley made cars in Coventry in the UK from 1919 to 1960. Welcome to the Armstrong Siddeley Motors blog dedicated to vintage Armstrong Siddeley motor cars from 1919 to 1932.

Armstrong Siddeley made five different models of car in the 1920s. Please click on the links below the images to find out more.

Thirty horse power car

 

30 horse-power car, which Armstrong Siddeley introduced in 1919 and continued to make into the 1930s. This picture shows the Mark 3 coachbuilt saloon in 1928. The 30 HP was a competitor to Rolls Royce 40/50, Lanchester, and the Daimler 30, 35 and 45 HP models. 

 

Eighteen horse power car

 

18 horse-power car, which Armstrong Siddeley started to make from 1922. Later on it became the 20HP car and in the 1930s was developed into the 20/25 model. This model was sold in a competitive market with rival models such as the Rolls Royce 20 HP, Austin 20 HP, Vauxhall 23/60, Crossley 20/70 and others.

Fourteen horse power car

 

14 horse-power car, which Armstrong Siddeley announced in July 1923. The company continued to make this model up to 1929. The 14 HP sold well in a competitive market with similar sized cars made by Vauxhall, Rover, Bean, Humber, Lea Francis, Sunbeam, Swift and others. 

 

Fifteen horse power car

 

15 horse-power car, which Armstrong Siddeley introduced in October 1928 and made through to the mid 1930s. This six cylinder car shared body styles with the four cylinder 14 HP model and had replaced it by 1930.

 

Twelve horse power car

12 horse-power car, which Armstrong Siddeley introduced as a lower cost model in October 1929. The company had, perhaps wisely, avoided competing in the 12 HP market previously as there were good 12 HP cars made by Austin, Alvis, Lagonda, Morris and others. 

The sizes were named after the standard RAC rating of horse-power which was based on the engine size. In the 1920s the road tax in the United Kingdom was based on the HP rating.

The links above take you to the pages on each model. In addition, I have added pages on Books about Armstrong Siddeley and vintage Armstrong Siddeley advertisements Advertising Armstrong Siddeley. Recently, I have added more information on the technical details of the different models. Do have a look.

What’s New

Have a look at the new images on the 14 HP and 15 HP pages. These are from catalogues issued in 1928 and 1929.  Click on the tag above.

Armstrong Siddeley’s Sphinx mascot

The Armstrong Siddeley Sphinx mascot is famous and was first used by John Davenport Siddeley in advertisements for the Siddeley Deasy car that he made before the start of the First World War in 1914. Armstrong Siddeley Motors adopted the Sphinx when they started production in 1919 and continued until they made their last car in 1960. The Sphinx changed over the years – it was sitting as in the photograph above through to 1932, lay down for the rest of the 1930s and was streamlined in the 1950s. The mascot that I show here dates from 1927.

Characteristics

So how do you spot an Armstrong Siddeley in a field or traffic jam of vintage cars? The first thing is look up. If the car has a saloon or coupe body, it will almost certainly be taller than most other vintage cars. Even a car with a tourer body will sit high above the road as the vintage Armstrong Siddeley has a high chassis, which is usually thought to be because many cars were sold to British colonial countries with poor roads. The design of the Armstrong Siddeley is architectural, reflecting the characteristics of Art Deco buildings of the 1920s. The cars had strong vertical and horizontal lines and an overall solidity. All the designs avoid fussy detailing and this is carried throughout the design so the cars had disc wheels and solid body panels with no louvres cut into the side panels of the bonnet. The Art Deco feel is strongest in the cars with V-shaped radiators.

Get closer to the car and you will see the Sphinx mascot on the radiator above the Armstrong Siddeley name picked out of blue enamel. There will also be an intertwined AS on the car’s pedals. Another unmistakable feature is the loud whine that comes from the gearbox in first and second gears. This is a characteristic of the crash gearbox, so is not heard on the cars with pre-selector gearboxes that were fitted as an alternative after 1928.

What will you notice if you are lucky enough to get a lift in a vintage Armstrong Siddeley? The first thing is the high step up onto the running board and into the car giving you a good view of the road ahead. The driver will turn on the petrol under the scuttle, maybe getting out to flood the carburettor, turn the ignition switch to M for magneto and then press the floor-mounted starter button. You will hear a loud whirr as the starter turns the heavy flywheel at the back of the engine. The car should start easily with minimal use of the choke. Out on the road the car will perform in line with many other non-sporting vintage cars with a top speed, depending on the model, of 45 to 60 mph.

The cars have a reputation for being slow. There is some truth in this for the cars with heavy bodies and it is definitely true of the underpowered 12 horse-power car. For the other models the reputation for slowness probably comes from two things that you will notice on your journey. The cars have a large flywheel and no clutch-stop so changing gear is a slow process as using the crash gearbox the driver has to wait for the engine to slow down before changing up a gear. Also, there is a large gap in the ratio between top gear and second so as soon as you change down for a hill the car slows down. The good thing is that there are few inclines that you cannot climb up in second gear!

News 2012

 

News 2011

Have a look at the very original looking 14 HP Broadway saloon that Bonhams had for sale at the end of 2010. It didn’t sell in the auction, so may be available still. This link will take you to the details 14 HP Saloon, Bonhams

News 2010

There were some interesting developments in 2010. There is new Facebook page for Armstrong Siddeley. To get to the Facebook page, click here Armstrong Siddeley on Facebook By far the best new book on Armstrong Siddeley came out in 2010. This is Bruce Lindsay’s book The Sphinx with the Heart of a Lion, an excellent survey of all the models made by Armstrong Siddeley with contemporary photographs and images from the company brochures. The book comes with a DVD of all of the catalogues. For more information follow this link to the author’s website: Bruce Lindsay

A number of vintage cars came up for sale in 2010. There was an amazing find in Australia of a 14HP tourer from 1926 with unrestored original body, which I expect was made in Australia. Hopefully, the new owner will restore it and get it on the road again. I do hope they keep as much of the original bodywork as possible and resist the temptation to replace everything and make the car look like new. There was another Australian bodied 14HP tourer which appeared for sale in a number of places, including Bonhams. Unfortunately, it was always wrongly described a Cotswold tourer, which it is not as these bodies were made at the Armstrong Siddeley works in Coventry, England. There are lots of differences, such as the shape of the body, doors, door handles, windscreen, rear wings, and dash board.

Early in the year there was an interesting, partly restored 18 HP saloon for sale in New Zealand. The advert said it dated from 1924, but I think it may be later than that. Before that there was a late 14 HP Armstrong Siddeley tourer for sale in Meath, Ireland and a short-18 HP for sale in England