Monica (automobile), Balbigny, Loire, France 1972 till 1974

Monica 560
1973 Monica 560
Overview
Manufacturer	Monica
Model years	1973 – 1975
Assembly	France: Balbigny, Loire
Designer	Tony Rascanu, David Coward
Body and chassis
Class	Grand tourer
Body style	4-door sedan
Layout	Longitudinal front-engine, rear-wheel drive
Powertrain
Engine	5.6 L Chrysler LA V8(gasoline)
Transmission	3-speed automatic (TorqueFlite ) 5-speed manual (ZF)
Dimensions
Wheelbase	2,769 mm (109.0 in)
Length	4,928 mm (194.0 in)
Width	1,803 mm (71.0 in)
Height	1,346 mm (53.0 in)
Kerb weight	1,821 kg (4,015 lb)

Mon­ica is the name of a French lux­ury au­to­mo­bile pro­duced in the com­mune of Bal­bigny in the de­part­ment of Loire be­tween 1972 and 1974.

The beginning

The Mon­ica car was a pro­ject of Jean Tastevin, a grad­u­ate en­gi­neer of the École cen­trale de Paris. His fa­ther Ar­naud bought the Ate­lier et Chantiers de Bal­bigny in 1930. That com­pany was a man­u­fac­turer of min­ing and rail­way equip­ment. In 1955 Jean suc­ceeded his fa­ther, be­com­ing Chair­man and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor. He re­named the com­pany Com­pag­nie française de pro­duits métal­lurgiques, or CFPM, and began to spe­cial­ize in the man­u­fac­ture and rental of rail­road tank cars. The fac­tory where the rolling stock was man­u­fac­tured op­er­ated under a dif­fer­ent name, being Com­pag­nie Française de Matériels Fer­rovi­aires (CFMF). The com­pany pros­pered, even­tu­ally com­ing to have 400 em­ploy­ees.

Tastevin was an au­to­mo­bile en­thu­si­ast who per­son­ally owned cars from Aston Mar­tin and Facel Vega. After Facel Vega shut down in 1964 he bought a Jaguar, but re­gret­ted not being able to buy a French-made car of that class.

In pur­suit of both his in­ter­est in cars and a way to di­ver­sify his rail­way busi­ness, Tastevin began mak­ing plans to launch his own brand of au­to­mo­bile in 1966. He made his long-time as­sis­tant, Henri Szykowksi, the pro­ject man­ager. He would also set aside a por­tion of his fac­tory in Bal­gigny so that the cars could truly be said to be made in France.

The car was named in ho­n­our of Tastevin’s wife, Monique Tastevin.

Monica 1973 in video

Development history and prototypes

Au­to­mo­tive en­gi­neer and rac­ing dri­ver Chris Lawrence’s com­pany Lawrence­Tune En­gines had de­vel­oped a 2.6-litre ver­sion of the Stan­dard en­gine used in the Tri­umph TR4. Lawrence’s ver­sion used a cross­flow cylin­der head of his own de­sign and Tecalemit-Jack­son fuel in­jec­tion to make a claimed 182 bhp (136 kW) bhp. Au­to­mo­tive jour­nal­ist Gérard ”Jabby” Crom­bac had seen the en­gine at the 1966 Rac­ing Show at Olympia West Hall in Lon­don. The ar­ti­cle he wrote about it had caught Tastevin’s eye. Tastevin wrote to Lawrence ask­ing about hav­ing Lawrence­Tune sup­ply 250 en­gines per year for his new car. Upon learn­ing that the car was not yet de­vel­oped, Lawrence of­fered the ser­vices of his own com­pany. Crom­bac, who was fa­mil­iar with Lawrence’s rac­ing ex­ploits, vouched for Lawrence and Tastevin en­trusted de­vel­op­ment of the Mon­ica to LawrenceTune.

The first chas­sis and the jig to pro­duce it were built to­gether. Lawrence laid out a chas­sis with a cen­tral tun­nel made of four square-sec­tion 18 gauge steel tubes with ex­ten­sive cross-brac­ing. Two long steel boxes with tri­an­gu­lar cross-sec­tions were made of 16 gauge steel and at­tached to the chas­sis in the door sill area. These stiff­ened the chas­sis and were also to serve as the car’s fuel tanks. 16 gauge alu­minum formed the front and rear bulk­heads and floors and was used on both sides of the cen­tral tun­nel to stiffen the car fur­ther. Voids in the tun­nel were filled with ex­panded polyurethane foam to add even more stiff­ness and deaden sound.

The front sus­pen­sion used very tall up­rights with the wheel spin­dles on one side and a short stub axle ex­tend­ing in­wards on the other. Spring­ing was by ver­ti­cally mounted coil-over-damper units mounted in­board and op­er­ated through rocker-style upper arms. The lower arms were con­ven­tional wide-based wish­bones made of a one-piece wish­bone and long ra­dius arm run­ning back to­wards the bulk­head. Steer­ing was rack-and-pin­ion mounted high, at the same level as the upper wish­bone.

The rear sus­pen­sion was a De Dion sys­tem with coil springs, two par­al­lel lead­ing links on each side and a Pan­hard rod. The dif­fer­en­tial was from the Rover P6B (also known as the Rover 3500) with a crown-and-pin­ion made by Hew­land, but with an ad­di­tional nose-piece that gave the op­tion of two rear-axle ra­tios; a high-nu­meric ratio for in town and a low-nu­meric ratio for high-speed cruising. A lever in the cock­pit al­lowed the ratio to be changed while in mo­tion.

Brak­ing was pro­vided by a dual-cir­cuit power as­sisted Lock­heed and Girling sys­tem with 12-inch vented disks in front and 10-inch solid disk brakes in the rear. The rear brakes were mounted in­board and the front brakes were mounted to the stub-axle on the front up­right, which brought them out of the wheels and into the air-stream for cool­ing.

As the pro­to­type chas­sis was near­ing com­ple­tion Lawrence began to have sec­ond thoughts about using the Lawrence­Tune/Stan­dard-Tri­umph en­gine. Lawrence knew that the Tri­umph en­gine was to be phased out of pro­duc­tion by 1967. He also felt that this rel­a­tively heavy, rough, and noisy en­gine was not ap­pro­pri­ate for a new lux­ury car.

Lawrence put Tastevin in touch with Ed­ward C. “Ted” Mar­tin, who had de­signed an en­gine that Lawrence thought would work well in the Monica. After eval­u­at­ing the en­gine Tastevin bought the de­sign, rights and ex­ist­ing tool­ing for Ted Mar­tin’s en­gine. The agree­ment in­cluded four com­plete 3.0 litre engines.

The Mar­tin en­gine was an all-al­loy V8 with a sin­gle over­head camshaft (SOHC) per bank dri­ven by a toothed-belt (orig­i­nally Gilmer belt – see also Tim­ing belt). De­signed for the new 3-litre limit an­nounced for the 1966 For­mula One sea­son, it weighed just 230 lb (100 kg) with an­cil­lar­ies and pro­duced 270 bhp (200 kW)@7000 rpm. An un­usual fea­ture of the Mar­tin V8 was that four of the con­nect­ing rods were forked at the big end, much like those on the Rolls Royce Mer­lin engine. The con­nect­ing rod for the op­pos­ing cylin­der bore fit into the gap of the forked rod. This meant that the cylin­der banks were not off­set on the crank-line, re­duc­ing over­all en­gine length. The en­gine was used in the Pearce-Mar­tin F1 car as well as the Lu­cas-Mar­tin, a mod­i­fied Lotus 35 For­mula 2 frame that was run briefly in For­mula One. It also ap­peared in 2.8-litre form in some spe­cials, in­clud­ing some of Lawrence’s own Deep Sander­son sports and rac­ing cars.

This ini­tial pro­to­type first ran at Sil­ver­stone in 1968 with­out bodywork. The dri­ve­train for the car was a 3-litre Mar­tin V8 dri­ving through a Tri­umph TR4 gear­box with overdrive. The car weighed 1070 kg. Over­all per­for­mance was good but the test­ing un­cov­ered prob­lems with the en­gine and its lack of road-car an­cil­lar­ies.

Body­work for the first pro­to­type was fab­ri­cated by Mau­rice Gomm. This car was very dif­fer­ent in ap­pear­ance from the sub­se­quent pro­to­types and the pro­duc­tion mod­els and has been com­pared to an over­sized Pan­hard CD. Nei­ther Tastevin nor his wife were happy with the ap­pear­ance of the first pro­to­type.

A sec­ond pro­to­type chas­sis was built and sent to Williams & Pritchard, who pro­duced a body for it in alu­minum. The style of this body was much more an­gu­lar than the first. Tastevin per­son­ally re­quested some last-minute changes to the shape which would be un­done in later pro­to­types, but in gen­eral pro­to­type #2 set the gen­eral di­rec­tion for sub­se­quent bodies. This sec­ond car was reg­is­tered as a Deep Sander­son and given reg­is­tra­tion num­ber 2 ARX. After its use as a de­vel­op­ment mule pro­to­type #2 was used as a per­sonal car by team mem­ber Colin James, after which it was ac­quired by Peter Dodds, an­other mem­ber of the Mon­ica team.

In 1969 pro­to­type chas­sis #3, the first to re­ceive a ZF 5-speed man­ual trans­mis­sion, was built. At this time the Tastevins in­tro­duced Tudor (Tony) Ras­canu, a Ro­man­ian exile and for­mer shop man­ager for Vi­g­nale in Italy, to the pro­ject. Ras­canu was en­trusted with the job of com­pletely restyling the body­work for the third pro­to­type, but was not al­lowed to make any mod­i­fi­ca­tions to Lawrence’s chas­sis, which was to be sent to French coach-builder Henri Chapron in Paris. Chapron was to build a full-sized ma­que­tte, or body-form, of the re­vised car under Ras­canu’s oversight. Ras­canu and Capron’s work met with Tastevin’s ap­proval. With hid­den head­lamps in a slop­ing aero­dy­namic nose and wide hor­i­zon­tal tail­lights it was much more ap­peal­ing than the pre­vi­ous two at­tempts. The ma­que­tte was then sent to Car­rozze­ria Al­fredo Vi­g­nale in Turin to be used as a base for Vi­g­nale to pro­duce a body in steel.

Be­fore de­liv­er­ing the ma­que­tte to Vi­g­nale, Tastevin asked Lawrence to first de­liver pro­to­type #2 to the work­shops of Vir­gilio Con­rero, also in Turin. The fa­mous Alfa me­chanic was to do a de­tailed as­sess­ment of the Mar­tin en­gine and eval­u­a­tion of the car’s performance. Con­rero was crit­i­cal of al­most every as­pect of the Mar­tin en­gine and was skep­ti­cal of the power curves pro­vided by Lawrence. He told the fac­tory “this en­gine is a trap that will never work under nor­mal traf­fic conditions”. Con­rero in­sisted on a fly­ing-kilo­me­tre test of the pro­to­type, after which he would run his 2-litre Giuli­etta on the same course for com­par­i­son. Lawrence sus­pected that Con­rero was try­ing to dis­credit both the Mar­tin en­gine and Lawrence­Tune in an at­tempt to take Lawrence’s place on the Mon­ica pro­ject. He ex­am­ined the times recorded for the Mon­ica’s run and dis­cov­ered an ir­reg­u­lar­ity in the num­bers. When Tastevin con­fronted Con­rero with this in­for­ma­tion the test­ing was halted and Con­rero’s in­volve­ment in the pro­ject ended.

Lawrence de­liv­ered chas­sis #3 to Vi­g­nale’s car­roz­e­ria, and they com­pleted the body in steel. While pro­to­type #3 was a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment the Tastevins were not yet en­tirely sat­is­fied with its ap­pear­ance. Per­for­mance of this car was also dis­ap­point­ing due to it being be­tween 200 kg (440 lb) and 250 kg (550 lb) over­weight. By way of ex­pla­na­tion Lawrence drilled a hole into the scut­tle. The drill pen­e­trated 13 mm (0.5 in) of lead. Vi­g­nale, in the mean time, sold his com­pany to DeTomaso in De­cem­ber 1969 and died three days later in an au­to­mo­bile ac­ci­dent while dri­ving a Maserati.

Dur­ing the May 1968 events in France, Tastevin de­camped the en­tire staff of CFPM to Geneva and tasked Lawrence to keep the Mon­ica pro­ject going. Tastevin pro­vided Lawrence with fund­ing to find sub-con­trac­tors to build cars in England. Lawrence ap­proached Jensen, who he knew were al­ready build­ing cars for Sunbeam, Volvo and Austin-Healey as well as their own C-V8s and In­ter­cep­tors. Jensen was not set up to pro­duce the body pan­els though. Pan­els for their other as­sem­bly con­tracts came from out­side of the com­pany. Lawrence took pro­to­type #3 and went look­ing for some­one to pro­vide the pan­els. He found a com­pany named Air­flow Stream­line in Luton that spe­cial­ized in pro­duc­ing alu­minum cabs for trucks. Air­flow only asked for a com­plete set of en­gi­neer­ing draw­ings, a chas­sis and the num­ber of body pan­els that Lawrence would require. Chas­sis #4 and #6 were de­liv­ered to Air­flow Stream­line and Ras­canu was in­stalled there to su­per­vise the pro­duc­tion of the nec­es­sary draw­ings.

An­other sub-con­trac­tor would be needed to sup­ply the en­gines. Two pos­si­bil­i­ties pre­sented them­selves. One was Coven­try-Vic­tor, and the other was Rolls-Royce. Lawrence had heard that Rolls-Royce had re­cently idled one of their pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties due to the loss of a con­tract and might be in­ter­ested in tak­ing on the Mar­tin V8 project. Lawrence met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Rolls-Royce, who were fas­ci­nated by the small size of the Mar­tin V8 and in­trigued by the forked con­nect­ing rods so rem­i­nis­cent of those in Rolls-Royce’s own Mer­lin. Rolls-Royce sub­se­quently won an­other de­fense con­tract which would re­ac­ti­vate the pre­vi­ously idled plant and bowed out of ne­go­ti­a­tions. Lawrence went back to Coven­try-Vic­tor.

In the in­ter­ven­ing time things had set­tled down in Paris, and Tastevin wanted to move the pro­ject along quickly. Chas­sis #5 was sent to the fac­tory in Bal­bigny while Lawrence set about es­tab­lish­ing a ma­chine shop at Lawrence­Tune En­gines able to pro­duce the en­gines as well. Prob­lems with cast­ings com­ing from a com­pany called Birm­ing­ham Al­loys prompted Lawrence to have Tastevin search his con­tacts in the French alu­minum in­dus­try for an al­ter­na­tive sup­plier, set­tling on a com­pany called Montupet.

Air­flow Steam­line was still with­out their tech­ni­cal draw­ings and was not get­ting any in­for­ma­tion out of Paris. It turned out that Ras­cenu, sadly, had died in 1970 be­fore being able to com­plete the drawings. Lawrence met with Air­flow Stream­line to dis­cuss the changes they wanted in the ma­que­tte and Lawrence con­vinced Air­flow to build two bod­ies on the two chas­sis they had using pro­to­type #3, which would be left there, as a struc­tural guide. The car they would pro­duce, pro­to­type #4, would be Lawrence’s favourite Mon­ica of all.

David Cow­ard was hired from Au­to­car mag­a­zine where he was work­ing as an illustrator. Prior to that he had worked at coach­builder James Young. Cow­ard re­fined Ras­canu’s de­sign by low­er­ing the side win­dow line and deep­en­ing the wind­screen to give the car a more con­tem­po­rary ap­pear­ance. The body was also low­ered three inches be­tween the floor pan and the roof and four inches were added to the width.

After sort­ing out some is­sues with pro­to­type #4 at­ten­tion turned to tool­ing. Tool­ing to pro­duce the body­work in alu­minum turned out to be pro­hib­i­tively ex­pen­sive, but a com­pany named Ab­bate was found in Turin that would make tool­ing out of resin that would be able to pro­duce up to 100 body sets in steel. The price for the set would be £100,000.

When the un­rest in Paris had sub­sided the idea of con­tract­ing out pro­duc­tion of the car had ended, but Tastevin had kept Coven­try-Vic­tor under con­tract to pro­duce the en­gines. They had been asked to pro­duce 25 copies of the en­gine in a 2.8 litre dis­place­ment. Coven­try-Vic­tor was only able to pro­duce 18 en­gines be­fore de­clar­ing bankruptcy.

At the same time Lawrence had pressed ahead with pro­duc­ing the en­gines at Lawrence­Tune head­quar­ters in Eng­land. Tests of the 2.8 litre en­gine led him to be­lieve that this ver­sion was un­der-pow­ered for the car, and so he en­larged his. With dis­place­ment in­creased to 3423 cc fed by four 2-bar­rel Weber 40 DCLN down-draught car­bu­re­tors and the Mon­ica name in script cast into its valve-cov­ers, the re­vised en­gine pro­duced 240 bhp (180 kW)@6000 rpm. While max­i­mum torque wasn’t pro­duced until 4000 rpm the torque curve was rel­a­tively flat from 2500 to 4000 rpm.

Even­tu­ally the tech­ni­cal draw­ings were com­pleted and ap­proved by Tastevin, which Lawrence de­liv­ered to Turin along with pro­to­type #4 so that pro­duc­tion of the body pan­els using the resin/steel hy­brid tool­ing could begin. Com­par­isons have been drawn be­tween the final shape of the Mon­ica and many of its con­tem­po­raries, with the front view hav­ing been com­pared to the Maserati Indy and Lotus Elan +2, the rear to the Fer­rari 365 GT 2+2, and the side el­e­va­tion to the Aston Mar­tin DBS.

Prob­lems con­tin­ued with the en­gine how­ever. Blown head-gas­kets were com­mon and dif­fi­cul­ties with de­liv­er­ies of both block and cylin­der head cast­ings held back development.

In an ex­clu­sive ar­ti­cle in l’Auto-Jour­nal, writ­ers Jean Mis­tral and Gilles Guérithaut pub­lished a pre­view of the Mon­ica’s debut at the up­com­ing Salon de l’Auto in Oc­to­ber along with an in­ter­view with Tastevin. Among the things the founder re­vealed were his plans to build 400 cars per year.

Tastevin de­cided that the car would debut at the Salon de l’Auto show in Paris in Oc­to­ber 1971. The car on dis­play was pow­ered by a Mar­tin V8 and was called the Mon­ica 350. Tastevin arranged to have a car raised to the tenth floor of a Paris hotel the day be­fore the show, and then have it moved over to the Salon, where the car was re­ceived en­thu­si­as­ti­cally. The morn­ing after the day of the show Lawrence was ap­proached by Zora-Arkus Dun­tov, who asked if he could take the car for a drive. Lawrence handed him the keys.

Shortly after the Paris auto show, Tastevin phoned Lawrence and told him that he had arranged for the car to be eval­u­ated by a team from Matra. A team of six from Matra drove the cars for over three hours straight and then met with Tastevin. The out­come of the eval­u­a­tion was that the Matra en­gi­neers thought that the car should go into pro­duc­tion, but only with a dif­fer­ent engine.

Con­sid­er­a­tion was given to using an Aston Mar­tin V8, but that op­tion was too ex­pen­sive to pur­sue. Lawrence was sent to the United States to meet with Ford, Chevro­let and Chrysler to arrange for a sup­ply of en­gines. Ford and Chevro­let were quickly elim­i­nated from the run­ning but Chrysler was very open to the idea. At the be­gin­ning of 1973 the de­ci­sion was fi­nally made to aban­don the Mar­tin V8 and adopt a North Amer­i­can en­gine, specif­i­cally the 5.6-litre (5563 cc) “340” Chrysler LA se­ries V8.

To han­dle the extra weight power-steer­ing was added, and the rear axle was beefed up. As an added bonus, Chrysler shipped the en­gines with an air-con­di­tion­ing com­pres­sor, so that fea­ture was added at the same time. Other minor changes in­cluded fab­ri­cat­ing the req­ui­site motor mounts, hav­ing two new vents let into the fend­ers and, on later mod­els, two ad­di­tional grilles fit­ted to the hood.

Dur­ing road test­ing the new Chrysler en­gines began to fail. After in­ves­ti­gat­ing it be­came ap­par­ent that the cause of these prob­lems was that these en­gines were not de­signed to run for ex­tended du­ra­tion at the speeds pos­si­ble on the con­ti­nent. Lawrence re­turned to the States look­ing for the re­sources to rem­edy these prob­lems.

The en­gines des­tined for use in Mon­i­cas would all be spe­cially tuned by Racer Brown in the United States. Mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the en­gines in­cluded a Racer Brown stage 3 road camshaft with hy­draulic lifters, an Edel­brock Tor­quer in­take man­i­fold, a 4-bar­rel Holly R6909 750 CFM car­bu­re­tor, a Chrysler ma­rine spec­i­fi­ca­tion oil pump, Cle­vite shell bear­ings, Forge True pis­tons, Ma­rine spec­i­fi­ca­tion valves, and a Fel­pro race-qual­ity gas­ket set.^[1]:181 The com­pres­sion ratio was 10.5:1. All of these changes com­bined to bring out­put to 285 bhp (213 kW)@5400 rpm and 333 lb⋅ft (451 N⋅m)@4000 rpm.

It is re­ported that some cars may have been built with the larger 5.9 litre (5898 cc) “360” ver­sion of the Chrysler LA en­gine. These cars would have been des­ig­nated Mon­ica 590s. The di­men­sions at­trib­uted to this ver­sion by var­i­ous sources dif­fer, some­times sig­nif­i­cantly, from those of the 560 model. In par­tic­u­lar the 590 is listed as being 630mm shorter with a 100mm shorter wheel­base and 140 kg heav­ier. It was also more pow­er­ful, the en­gine being rated at 315 bhp (235 kW) and 332 lb⋅ft (450 N⋅m).

The re­vised and re­named Mon­ica 560 made its world pre­mier at the Geneva Auto Show in March 1973. It would ap­pear again at the Paris Auto Show in Oc­to­ber. The car was priced at 164,000 francs (roughly US$34,000 at the time), at a time when a Rolls-Royce Sil­ver Shadow cost 165,000 francs.

After the Geneva show Tastevin in­vited sev­eral rac­ing dri­vers and au­to­mo­tive jour­nal­ists to Paul Ri­card’s cir­cuit, Le Castel­let, to eval­u­ate the new Chrysler-pow­ered car. Among those there was dri­ver/jour­nal­ist Paul Frère, whom Tastevin in­vited to “lend a hand” in sort­ing out the car’s han­dling. He would also be the per­son who wrote the semi-of­fi­cial obit­u­ary for the Mon­ica car.

A rapid suc­ces­sion of pro­to­types would be built to fi­nal­ize the car. The cars at Le Castel­let were num­bers 8 and 9. Num­bers 10 and 11 were built for crash-test­ing and num­bers 12, 13 and 14 came after. Pro­to­type 14 was ba­si­cally pre-pro­duc­tion and would even­tu­ally be one of the cars Tastevin kept for his per­sonal use. Tastevin had hired a di­rec­tor to get pro­duc­tion under way at Bal­bigny, but noth­ing was built for a year while the new di­rec­tor stalled and made changes to the car. Even­tu­ally Tastevin fired the di­rec­tory and turned pro­duc­tion over to Lawrence­Tune again while he looked for a new director. The car was also sub­se­quently shown at the Earls Court auto show.

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AGENDA 21: SANTA MONICA TAKES OUT 1 CAR LANE FOR BIKE CORRIDOR ON BRIDGE.

LAFD Engine 43 / Auto / EB Santa Monica FWY @ Overland

The car

With the long de­vel­op­ment pe­riod fi­nally at an end, pro­duc­tion gets un­der­way in Bal­bigny.

The car is built on Lawrence’s steel-tube and sheet metal chas­sis. The body is Ras­canu’s de­sign with Cow­ard’s re­vi­sions ex­e­cuted en­tirely in steel. Five ex­te­rior colours are avail­able: At­lantic Blue, Azure Blue, Pur­ple Ama­ranth, Chest­nut Brown and Beige Sand. The final ver­sion of Lawrence’s rocker-arm/De Dion sus­pen­sion is au­to­mat­i­cally lev­el­ing, and the car sits on four Miche­lin 215/70VR-12 Col­lec­tion tires mounted on 14 inch alloy wheels. The orig­i­nal sill-mounted fuel tanks have been re­placed with a sin­gle tank under the floor of the trunk due to reg­u­la­tory re­stric­tions.

The power-as­sisted rack-and-pin­ion steer­ing is con­nected to an ad­justable steer­ing col­umn that is topped by a cus­tom Mo­tolita steer­ing wheel.

Brak­ing on the pro­duc­tion Mon­ica was still a dual cir­cuit sys­tem with Lock­heed disks in­board at the front op­er­ated by a 4-pis­ton caliper and Girling disks at the rear op­er­ated by a 3-pis­ton caliper but the disks front and rear were both now 11 inch ven­ti­lated pieces.

The seats are up­hol­stered in Con­nolly leather avail­able in three colours: Ma­rine, Ha­vana, and Cham­pagne. The floor is cov­ered in Shet­land wool car­pet­ing. The dash­board is fin­ished in burl elm wood and suede.

The state of the car is mon­i­tored by a brace of cus­tom Jaeger in­stru­ments all bear­ing the Mon­ica name. Gauges in­clude a speedome­ter, tachome­ter, oil tem­per­a­ture gauge, oil pres­sure gauge, am­me­ter, water tem­per­a­ture gauge, fuel gauge, and clock.

The win­dows are elec­tri­cally op­er­ated. A High-fi­delity sound sys­tem with in­te­grated tape recorder and player is stan­dard equip­ment, as is an air-con­di­tion­ing sys­tem with sep­a­rate con­trols for the rear seat pas­sen­gers. The doors on the Mon­ica are elec­tri­cally op­er­ated to open and close silently at the touch of a but­ton. In the trunk is a com­plete set of cus­tom lug­gage.

With a quoted top speed of 240 km/h (150 mph) the Mon­ica 560 could lay claim to being “The fastest sedan in the world” at the time.

Pho­tos from the pe­riod in­di­cate that a fu­ture coupe and con­vert­ible were al­ready being planned.

The end

The Mon­ica 560 makes its last pub­lic ap­pear­ance at the Paris Auto Salon Paris Auto Show in Oc­to­ber 1974. On Feb­ru­ary 7 of 1975 Tastevin an­nounces the ces­sa­tion of pro­duc­tion and closes the com­pany.

Many fac­tors con­tributed to the fail­ure of the car. It en­dured a seven-year long ges­ta­tion pe­riod. The car was re­mark­ably ex­pen­sive while lack­ing the kind of rep­u­ta­tion or recog­ni­tion en­joyed by other more es­tab­lished mar­ques in this mar­ket. It faced com­pe­ti­tion from many sim­i­lar-sized low-vol­ume man­u­fac­tur­ers. Fi­nally, it had the mis­for­tune to be of­fi­cially re­leased just as the first major oil cri­sis made fuel prices jump and large ex­pen­sive mo­tor­cars less de­sir­able.

Five Mon­i­cas re­main­ing at the Lawrence­Tune head­quar­ters were sold by Lawrence to Cliff Davis and Bernie Ec­cle­stone, the pro­ceeds being pay­ment for Lawrence­Tunes work for Tastevin. Lawrence was dri­ving pre-pro­duc­tion car #21 at the time. The Tastevins kept three Mon­i­cas for their own use.

The pro­duc­tion as­sets of the Mon­ica com­pany and as many as thirty cars in var­i­ous stages of com­ple­tion were sold to French race dri­ver and For­mula One team owner Guy Ligier. Ligier did not re­sume pro­duc­tion.

In April 1976 Motor Sport mag­a­zine re­ported an an­nounce­ment by Bob Jankel of Pan­ther West­winds that his com­pany and C.J. Lawrence and Co. would re­sume pro­duc­tion of the Mon­ica. C.J. Lawrence and Co. would man­u­fac­ture sub-as­sem­blies and Pan­ther would as­sem­ble, paint and trim the car. Power was else­where ru­mored to be com­ing from a Jaguar V12 motor. Pro­duc­tion would move from Bal­bigny to Sur­rey. Noth­ing came of these plans.

Six pro­duc­tion Mon­i­cas are known to exist. At least three of the pro­to­types are re­ported to re­main in Britain. Chris Lawrence per­son­ally owned a pro­duc­tion Mon­ica for sev­eral years that was sold from his estate.

Gallery

• 

  Front three-quar­ter view

  

  Rear three-quar­ter view

  

  Rear view

  

  In­te­rior

  

  Trunk logo

  

  Door­sill logo

  collected pictures

  

Literature

• Monica – edited by Emory Christer ISBN 978-6-134977-82-1
• Preston Tucker & Others: Tales of Brilliant Automotive Innovations ISBN 978-1-845840-17-4
• Monica, automobile française de prestige by Frédéric Brandely. Hardcover (published June, 2012) ISBN 979-1090084049
• Monica, automobile française de prestige by Frédéric Brandely. Paperback. ISBN 978-2-913307-13-1
• Kevin Brazendale: The Encyclopedia of classic cars. Advanced Marketing Services, London 1999, ISBN 1-57145-182-X (engl.).

References

1. ^ ^{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzaaabacadaeafagahaiajakal} Lawrence, Chris (2008). Morgan Maverick. Yorkshire: Douglas Loveridge Publications. ISBN978-1-900113-04-5.
2. ^ ^abc “1972/1975 Monica…”http://www.gatsbyonline.com. Retrieved 2017-03-25.
3. ^ “London Racing Car Show 1967”. http://www.sportscars.tv. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
4. ^ “Ted Martin and the AMCO Engines”. http://www.modelenginenews.org. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
5. ^ “Anglo-French Monica”. http://www.motorsportmagazine.com. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
6. ^ “Monica Prototype No. 2”. classiccars.brightwells.com. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
7. ^ “Tudor Rascanu, de Dody à Tony”. voronet.centerblog.net. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
8. ^ “ECLIPSE AVORTEE”. http://www.automobile-sportive.com. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
9. ^ “Monica : Belle, luxueuse, française et ancêtre des coupés 4 portes”. blog.p.free.fr. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
10. ^ Georgano, Nick (2001). The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile (2nd ed.).
11. ^ “1973 Monica 590 technical specifications”. http://www.carfolio.com. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
12. ^ “History of Lawrence Tune     …… continued”. http://www.lawrence-tune.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
13. ^ “Monica”. http://www.allcarindex.com. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
14. ^ “1974 Monica”. http://www.silverstoneauctions.com. Retrieved 2016-12-13.

External links

• http://blog.doctissimo.fr/phedor/monica-belle-oubliee-2266489.html
• http://www.automobile-sportive.com/guide/monica/560.php
• https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/motoring/features/a-rare-beauty-223823.html
• https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/monica-590-1973.304443/

Cars GLAS

Glas (company)

Glas Goggomobil 250

Hans Glas GmbH is a former German automotive company, which was based in Dingolfing. Originally a maker of farm machinery, Glas evolved first into a producer of motor scooters, then automobiles. It was purchased by BMW in 1966, mainly to gain access to Glas’s patents; they were the first to use a timing belt with an overhead camshaft in an automotive application. Its limited model range was shortly phased out by its new parent.

History

Glas 1700 GT Cabriolet, 1965

Mechanic Andreas Glas founded a repair company for agricultural machines at 1895 in Pilsting. He named the company Andreas Glas, Reparaturwerkstätte für landwirtschaftliche Maschinen mit Dampfbetrieb (in English: Andreas Glas, repair-shop for steam-powered agricultural machines). During the summer periods about 16 people worked for him. In 1905 Andreas Glas’ company built their first crop sowing machines (seed drill). He then had sufficient work to employ all his employees during the winters. The production of sowing machines rose from year to year:

Winter period 1905/06 – 10 sowing machines

Autumn 1906 – 20 pieces

Winter period 1906/07 – 40 machines

1907 – 60 pieces

Winter period 1907/08 – 254 sowing machines.

Since 1905 Glas had a branch office in Dingolfing. He started to produce in Dingolfing in 1908 with 150 sowing machines per year. The production count rose each year.

After World War II, the market for sowing machines was declining, and the company began building little carrows and later working machines for bakers along with sowing machines.

Products

Goggomobil TS 250 Coupe.

Glas were known for small cars like the Goggomobil. However, in 1964 the company introduced the Glas 1300GT coupe and later the 1700GT. The body was designed by Pietro Frua. However competition, mostly from British cars, was tough and in 1966 they released the 2600GT powered by a SOHC V8 engine, with a volume just under 2.6 litres. However this didn’t help and later the same year the company was sold to BMW. The Glas models were kept in production by BMW, but fitted with BMW engines. The Glas 1300 GT coupe was fitted with a 1.6-litre BMW engine and renamed BMW 1600 GT. BMW also fitted a 3-litre engine and named it 3000 GT. This model kept the Glas name, but had a BMW logo in the front and rear. In 1968 BMW created their own large coupe, the BMW 2500 CS, and this meant the end for Glas. 277 copies of 2600 GT was made and 389 of the 3000 GT.

Scooters

Glas Goggo scooter with sidecar

In 1951 Andreas Glas saw the Vespa scooter from Piaggio in Verona, Italy. He was so enthused that he began production of motor scooters that July.

The scooter debuted with a 125 cc motor, increased over time to 150 cc and 200 cc. Until 1956 46,181 motor scooters were built. Production of scooters stopped because of the Goggomobil cars. From 1953 on, load-carrying scooters were built as well. With the 200 cc engine and 9.5 bhp, they had a load capacity of 200 kg.

Cars

A 1966 Glas 2600 with Glas logo, nicknamed Glaserati

A 1968 BMW Glas 3000GT. Notice the BMW logo in the front, but that it otherwise doesn’t look like a BMW.

1958 Goggomobil Transporter van

• Goggomobil T250, T300, T400, Sedan (1955-1969), Coupé (1957-1969), Transporter (1957-1965)

1957 goggomobil isar

• Glas Isar T600, T700 (1958-1965)

Glas 1004

• Glas 1204

• Glas 1304
• Glas 1004, 1204, 1304 (1962-1968)

• Glas 1300 GT all models

• Glas 1700 GT + all models
• Glas 1300 GT, 1700 GT (1963-1967)
• Glas 1700 (1964-1968)

• Glas 2600

• Glas 3000 V8
• Glas 2600 V8, 3000 V8 (“Glaserati”) (1966-1968)

Absorption by BMW

In 1962 BMW released the BMW 1500. The popular four-door compact’s success exhausted the production capacity of the Munich plant. In 1966 management decided to buy Glas and absorb the Glas model line. Most of Glas’ existing lineup was retired, while some models ended up being badged as BMWs until the company was fully absorbed. It was reputed that the acquisition was mainly to gain access to Glas’ development of the timing belt with an overhead camshaft in automotive applications, although some saw Glas’ Dingolfing plant as another incentive. However, this factory was outmoded and BMW’s biggest immediate gain was, according to themselves, a stock of highly qualified engineers and other personnel. The Glas factory began the manufacture of BMW front and rear axles until they could be modernized and fully incorporated into BMW.

BMW immediately retired most of the Glas range, including all of the outdated microcars.

Changes under BMW

• The 04-type, the GT and the 1700 sedan were given BMW badges in the last year of their production.
• The GT was reengineered and so it was built with a BMW engine and rear axle and sold as BMW 1600 GT until 1968.
• The V8 got a bigger engine constructed by Glas and was also sold until 1968 as BMW-GLAS 3000 V8.
• The 1700 sedan was built and sold by a South African importer with several changes as BMW 1800 SA until 1974.
• The Goggomobil T300, T400, T400 Coupé (renamed Sport), Glas Isar T700 and the Glas 1204 were licensed for manufacture in Argentina during the 1960s.

Salesfigueres

Goggo mobile

1955            10126

1956            33385

1957            43372

1958            36717

Isar

1958            6741

1959          22561

Isar

1959          24717

1960         19506

1960         17854

1961         20285

1961         15001

1962         18267

1962         11888

Glas 1004

1962            2286

1963          15945

1963             5778

1963            7394

1964          14950

1964            4634

1964             7347

Glas 1300

1964          1140

Glas1700

1964            952

1965        11610

1965            972

1965          8533

1965          1865

1965           1792

1966         12490

1966           8991

Glas1700

1966           5145

Glas2600

1966             219

1967           8961

1967           6944

1967           1563

1967             373

1968           6906

1968             368

1968              494

1968                74

Goggomobile

1969            3141

Goggo mobile 1955 10126

1956 33385

1957 43372

1958 36717

Isar 1958 6741

1959 22561

Isar 1959 24717

1960 19506

1960 17854

1961 20285

1961 15001

1962 18267

1962 11888

Glas1004 1962 2286

1963 15945

1963 5778

1963 7394

1964 14950

1964 4634

1964 7347

Glas 1300 1964 1140

Glas1700 1964 952

1965 11610

1965 972

1965 8533

1965 1865

1965 1792

1966 12490

1966 8991

Glas1700 1966 5145

Glas2600 1966 219

1967 8961

1967 6944

1967 1563

1967 373

1968 6906

1968 368

1968 494

1968 74

Gogomobile 1969 3141

Closure

In the late 1960s BMW shut down Glas and built entirely new production facilities, which would eventually become an important production site. As of 2008, BMW’s Dingolfing branch is BMW’s largest factory, with 22,000 workers producing 5-, 6- and 7-Series cars and as well as bodies for Rolls-Royce.

References

1. ^ Jump up to:^a b Torrey, Volta, ed. (April 1953). “Scooter to Tote Farm Loads”. Popular Science. Vol. 162 no. 4. New York, NY USA. p. 100. ISSN 0161-7370. Retrieved 2012-05-19. This three-wheel cargo scooter, powered by a two-cycle engine, can chug along hauling as much as 440 pounds of goods in the little van at the rear.
2. Jump up^ “BMW take over Glas”. Autocar. Vol. 125 nbr 3689. 28 October 1966. p. 955.
3. Jump up^ Toronto Star 3 July 2004
4. Jump up^ Becker, Clauspeter (1971), Logoz, Arthur, ed., “BMW 2500/2800”, Auto-Universum 1971 (in German), Zürich, Switzerland: Verlag Internationale Automobil-Parade AG, XIV: 73
5. Jump up^ Becker, p. 74
6. Jump up^ www.auto-historia.com.ar Isard Argentina S.A. (Spanish) – accessed 4 December 2008

External links

• Company history at RitzSite
• Glas history in English
• Club of Goggomobil and drivers of Glas cars Dingolfing/Bavaria

 

AEC Trucks and Lorries

AEC – Associated Equipment Company

Associated Equipment Company (AEC)

Industry	Automotive
Fate	Renamed AEC Ltd. upon the establishment of the holding company ACV Ltd.
Founded	1912
Defunct	1979
Headquarters	Southall, Greater London, England
Products	Lorries, buses, motorcoaches
Parent	Leyland Motor Corporation (1962–1968) British Leyland Motor Corporation (1968–1975) British Leyland Ltd (1975–1979)

AEC Buses:

https://myntransportblog.com/2013/10/28/buses-aec-associated-equipment-company-ltd-england-uk/

AEC Regent

As­so­ci­ated Equip­ment Company (AEC) was a British ve­hi­cle man­u­fac­turer that built buses, mo­tor­coaches and lor­ries from 1912 until 1979. The name “As­so­ci­ated Equip­ment Com­pany” was hardly ever used; in­stead it traded under the AEC and ACLO brands.

AEC Routemaster

While fa­mously as­so­ci­ated with Lon­don’s AEC Routemas­ter buses, AEC sup­plied com­mer­cial ve­hi­cles to many com­pa­nies, both do­mes­ti­cally and around the world.

History

Inception

LGOC-X type

The Lon­don Gen­eral Om­nibus Com­pany, or LGOC, was founded in 1855 to amal­ga­mate and reg­u­late the horse-drawn om­nibus ser­vices then op­er­at­ing in Lon­don. The com­pany began pro­duc­ing motor om­nibuses for its own use in 1909 with the X-type de­signed by its chief motor en­gi­neer, Frank Searle, at works in Black­horse Lane, Waltham­stow, Lon­don. The X-type was fol­lowed by Searle’s B-type de­sign, con­sid­ered to be one of the first mass-pro­duced com­mer­cial vehicles.

1911 LGOC B-Type bus B340 London Transport Museum

In 1912, LGOC was taken over by the Un­der­ground Group of com­pa­nies, which at that time owned most of the Lon­don Un­der­ground, and ex­ten­sive tram op­er­a­tions. As part of the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion fol­low­ing the takeover, a sep­a­rate con­cern was set up for the bus man­u­fac­tur­ing el­e­ments, and was named As­so­ci­ated Equip­ment Com­pany, bet­ter-known as AEC.A 1921 AEC S-type Bus at the Heritage Motor Centre

AEC’s first com­mer­cial ve­hi­cle was a lorry based on the X-type bus chas­sis. With the out­break of the First World War in 1914, AEC’s abil­ity to pro­duce large num­bers of ve­hi­cles using as­sem­bly line meth­ods be­came im­por­tant in sup­ply­ing the in­creas­ing need for army lor­ries. AEC began large-scale pro­duc­tion of the 3-ton Y-type lorry, com­menced in 1916, and con­tin­ued be­yond the end of the war. From then on, AEC be­came as­so­ci­ated with both lor­ries and buses.

Interwar years

In 1926, AEC and Daim­ler formed the As­so­ci­ated Daim­ler Company (ADC), which was dis­solved two years later. In 1927, AEC moved its man­u­fac­tur­ing from Waltham­stow to a new plant at Southall in Mid­dle­sex.AEC Southall Works from the south, 1973

AEC Southall Works from the north, 1973

G. J. Rack­ham was ap­pointed Chief En­gi­neer and De­signer in 1928. He had pre­vi­ously worked for Ley­land Mo­tors. His ideas con­tributed sig­nif­i­cantly to AEC’s rep­u­ta­tion for qual­ity and re­li­a­bil­ity.1962-built AEC Mercury

From 1929, AEC pro­duced new mod­els: the names of lor­ries began with “M” (Ma­jes­tic, Mam­moth, Mer­cury, and so on), and those of buses began with “R” (Re­gent, Regal, Renown, and so on). These orig­i­nal “M-mod­els” con­tin­ued in pro­duc­tion until the end of the Sec­ond World War. AEC in­tro­duced diesel en­gines across the range in the mid-1930s.

From 1931 to 1938, AEC and Eng­lish Elec­tric co-pro­duced trol­ley­buses. AEC sup­plied the chas­sis, and EE the elec­tric mo­tors and con­trol equip­ment.

In 1932, AEC took a con­trol­ling in­ter­est in the British sub­sidiary of the Amer­i­can Four Wheel Drive(FWD) com­pany, and began to use more stan­dard AEC com­po­nents in those ve­hi­cles. To avoid con­fu­sion, these were mar­keted under the name Hardy. Pro­duc­tion ceased about 1936.

Second World War

Non-mil­i­tary pro­duc­tion stopped in 1941, from then until 1944 AEC pro­duced nearly 10,000 ve­hi­cles for the war ef­fort Road Trans­port Archives Dur­ing the war, AEC pro­duced their

10-ton 4×4 Mata­dor ar­tillery trac­tor (an adap­ta­tion of their com­mer­cial 4×2 Mata­dor lorry that ex­ploited AEC’s ex­pe­ri­ence with the Hardy FWD ven­ture).AEC 850 6 x 6 artillery tractor of 15 AA Battery towing a 3-inch AA gun on the cruciform travelling platform.

A 6×6 ver­sion was des­ig­nated as the AEC Mar­shall but al­most al­ways called the Mata­dor. To this they added theAEC Armoured Car Mk I

AEC Mk III Armoured Car

AEC Ar­moured Car in 1941. Other uses of the Mata­dor chas­sis were the Dea­con self-pro­pelled anti-tank gun ve­hi­cle, used briefly in North Africa; and theAEC Ar­moured Com­mand Ve­hi­cle, pop­u­larly known as the Dorch­ester.

AEC 6×6 Armoured Command Vehicle

Post war

A 1957 AEC Regent V

In 1946 AEC and Ley­land Mo­tors formed British United Trac­tion Ltd (BUT) as a joint ven­ture to man­u­fac­ture trol­ley­buses and trac­tion equip­ment for diesel rail­cars since re­duced de­mand would not re­quire the ex­ist­ing ca­pac­ity of both par­ents.

In 1946 AEC re­sumed civil­ian pro­duc­tion with the 0661/20 Re­gent II and the 0662/20 Regal I. These were not new mod­els but a recom­mence­ment of the most basic AEC 1939 spec­i­fi­ca­tion bus mod­els. The sin­gle-decker was going to be mar­keted as Regal II until some­body at Southall re­mem­bered the 1936-8 light­weight 0862 model of that name and as a re­sult the name was cor­rected after the launch pub­lic­ity had been printed. At the end of 1946 the post­war 0961 RT was in build and by 1948 Mam­moth Major, Mata­dor and Monarch Mk IIIs were in pro­duc­tion, fol­lowed by the ‘provin­cial’ Re­gent III and the Regal III. Also in 1948 AEC ac­quired Cross­ley Mo­tors and the Maud­slay Motor Com­pany and on 1 Oc­to­ber 1948 AEC set up As­so­ci­ated Com­mer­cial Ve­hi­cles (ACV) Ltd. as the hold­ing com­pany for the newly ac­quired busi­nesses and its own man­u­fac­tur­ing firm, which was re­named AEC Ltd. The ini­tials “AEC” re­mained on its ve­hi­cles, with the ex­cep­tion of some badge-en­gi­neered ver­sions, such as the Cross­ley Re­gent bus (one ex­am­ple of which may be seen at the North West Mu­seum of Road Trans­port). In 1949 ACV ac­quired the (bus) coach­build­ing com­pany Park Royal Ve­hi­cles, along with its sub­sidiary Charles H. Roe. Park Royal de­signed a new cab for the AEC Mer­cury in the mid-1950s, which ap­peared on all mod­els across the range about this time.

In 1961 ACV ac­quired Trans­port Equip­ment (Thorny­croft). Thorny­croft’s name dis­ap­peared from all the ve­hi­cles ex­cept the spe­cial­ist air­port crash ten­ders, such as the Nu­bian, and the “Mighty” Antar off-road trac­tor unit. The AEC Dumptruk was trans­ferred to Bas­ingstoke, and the Thorny­croft six-speed con­stant-mesh gear­box and later nine- and ten-speed range-change ver­sions were fit­ted to AEC, Ley­land and Al­bion buses and lor­ries.

The AEC en­gines were used in Finnish Vanaja lor­ries and buses in the 1960s.

Leyland takeover

Ley­land Mo­tors Ltd ac­quired ACV in 1962. AEC lor­ries were given the same “Er­go­matic” cabs used across sev­eral Ley­land mar­ques (in­clud­ing Al­bion). In 1968, all AEC dou­ble-decker buses ceased pro­duc­tion, and its last buses, mo­tor­coaches and lor­ries were built in 1979. The AEC name ac­tu­ally dis­ap­peared from com­mer­cial ve­hi­cles in 1977, but the Ley­land Marathon was built at the Southall plant until British Ley­land (as the par­ent com­pany was named by then) closed it in 1979.

Foreign operations

ACLO

ACLO (sup­posed to be the acronym of Asso­ci­ated Com­pany Lor­ries and Omnibuses) was the brand name used by AEC in Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, in­clud­ing Brazil, and in Spain (but not in Por­tu­gal) to sell all their prod­ucts.

It seems that there was no clear rea­son for this badge en­gi­neer­ing op­er­a­tion, al­though a for­mal re­quest from the Ger­man AEG in­dus­trial group, which was very ac­tive in the Span­ish-speak­ing coun­tries, has been sug­gested. This is quite likely as the AEC 422 NS type ex­ported to BVOAG Berlin was also badged ACLO.

ACLOs were spe­cially per­va­sive in Ar­gentina, Uruguay and Brazil. Par­tic­u­larly in Uruguay, there were two ACLO fleets. They were in­ter­est­ing buses, quite faster than Ley­land Tiger in use by other fleets. It was said at the time (early ’60s) that the main rea­son was in­ter-ur­ban gear­ing in­stead of purely urban gear­ing pre­sent in Ley­lands. An in­ter­est­ing fea­ture was pre­s­e­lec­tor gear-change, sim­i­lar to those in Ley­land buses, com­manded by a small­ish gated lever in­stalled by the steer­ing wheel, with a re­versed gate, with first gear to the right and up, and fourth gear to the bot­tom and left.

In Spain, ACLOs could be seen mainly as dou­ble-deck buses in Barcelona, and as line coaches in ALSA fleet.

UTIC-AEC

In Por­tu­gal, the AEC ve­hi­cles, mainly coaches and buses but also lor­ries, were as­sem­bled and bod­ied by União de Trans­porta­dores para Im­portação e Comércio, UTIC, a large coach­build­ing firm based in Lis­bon, and mar­keted under the UTIC-AEC badge, for many years.

From 1971-3 the Lough­bor­ough based dealer Moseley im­ported nine UTIC U2043 coaches which were mar­keted as the Mose­ley Con­ti­nen­tal Tagus. They were me­chan­i­cally equiv­a­lent to a rear-en­gined Re­liance or a coach ver­sion of the Swift 691 which AEC had planned but never mar­keted. They were ex­pen­sive to buy new and the square sided styling looked dated to British eyes in the age of the Elite and Dom­i­nant coaches, thus they were slow sell­ing. These were prob­a­bly the only right hand drive coaches built by UTIC. At the time Mose­ley also mar­keted Sal­vador Cae­tano Coaches under its own name.

Barreiros AEC

In the late fifties, Span­ish gov­ern­ment re­stric­tions on im­ports re­duced AEC sales in Spain to vir­tu­ally nil. As a con­se­quence, AEC ap­proached a Span­ish truck man­u­fac­turer, Bar­reiros Diesel, to jointly pro­duce buses and coaches based on AEC de­signs. The ven­ture started in 1961, used Bar­reiros AEC as brand name, dis­re­gard­ing ACLO, and seemed very promis­ing; pro­duc­tion of the AEC off-road dump trucks being planned too. Nev­er­the­less, the Ley­land takeover in 1962 soon un­der­mined the agree­ment, as Ley­land was part­ner­ing with Bar­reiros’s Span­ish arch-ri­val, Pe­gaso; and even­tu­ally Bar­reiros looked for an­other col­lab­o­ra­tor in the bus arena, sign­ing in 1967 an agree­ment with Bel­gian – Dutch com­pany Van Hool.

Vehicles

A preserved AEC Renown, previously run by King Alfred Motor Services.

Buses

Main article: List of AEC buses

Lorries and other commercial vehicles

Mammoth Major Tanker

Majestic

The 6 ton nor­mal-con­trol AEC Ma­jes­tic (Model 666) was in­tro­duced in 1930.

Mammoth

The AEC Mam­moth dates from the 1930s. This was a 7/8 ton lorry with a six-cylin­der over­head valve en­gine de­vel­op­ing 110 bhp (82 kW) on a wheel­base of 16 ft 7 in.

Later a dis­tinc­tion was made be­tween the Mam­moth Minor (6×2, with two front axles), the Mam­moth Major 6 (6×4) and the Mam­moth Major 8 (8×2 or 8×4), which ap­peared in 1934. The Mam­moth Major Mk II was in­tro­duced in 1935; the eight-wheeler could carry 15-ton loads. It re­mained in pro­duc­tion until 1948 when it was su­per­seded by the Mk III, which was me­chan­i­cally sim­i­lar, but had the Park Royal cab.

Mammoth Minor:AEC MAMMOTH MINOR GXF70

 GXF 70 HVD 318D

Mammoth Major 6:

1959-1966 AEC Mammoth Major 6 Mk V G6RA

Mammoth Major 8:

1939 AEC Mammoth Major 8 Mk II BEW605

Mandator

AEC Mandator MkV ( model G4 ) 9500

The AEC Manda­tor dates from the 1930s. The post-war Mk II was avail­able as a lorry and a trac­tor unit and the name was used for trac­tor units built from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Marshal

Pre-war 6×4 3ton lorry-There was a mil­i­tary ver­sion with var­i­ous body styles- some were em­ployed by the Royal Air Force as cranes (using the Coles Crane) See also: Matador

1960s-70s.

Matador

The orig­i­nal

AEC Mata­dor five-ton 4×2 com­mer­cial lorry was in­tro­duced in 1932. The name was most fa­mously used for AEC’s 4×4 Mata­dor ar­tillery trac­tor, which were known by the nick­name “Mat”. These ve­hi­cles ex­ploited AEC’s ex­pe­ri­ence with four-wheel drive that it had gained from its in­volve­ment in the British Four Wheel Drive ve­hi­cles mar­keted under the name Hardy.

The Mata­dor name is very often used for the 6×6 mil­i­tary ve­hi­cles that are more prop­erly des­ig­nated the 0854. These were an ex­tended Mata­dor chas­sis, mated to a ‘Mar­shall’ dou­ble-drive bogie

AEC pro­duced 9,620 ar­tillery trac­tors; 514 6×6 bowsers for the Royal Air Force; 192 6×6 lor­ries (some of which had Coles Cranes mounted); and 185 sim­i­lar ve­hi­cles, but 6×4, for mo­bile oxy­gen plants. Many mil­i­tary Mata­dors were adapted for post-war com­mer­cial use, es­pe­cially as tim­ber lor­ries and re­cov­ery ve­hi­cles.

There was a short run of the 0853 4×4 Mata­dor in the early fifties, due to on­go­ing is­sues with the in­tro­duc­tion of the re­place­ment Ley­land.

New civil­ian Mata­dors ap­peared after the war.

Mercury

The AEC Mer­cury (Model 440) was first built in 1928. This was a for­ward-con­trol lorry with a wheel­base of 14 ft (4.3 m) for 4 ton pay­loads. The Model 640 was in­tro­duced in 1930, with a four-cylin­der petrol en­gine de­vel­op­ing 65 bhp.

A 1970 AEC Mercury

The name was res­ur­rected for lor­ries built from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Militant

The AEC Mil­i­tant – or “Milly” – was the 1952 re­place­ment for the Mata­dor, and con­tin­ued in var­i­ous forms until the 1970s. (The orig­i­nal Mil­i­tant had been pro­duced by Maud­slay in the 1930s.)

Mogul

The AEC Mogul was a nor­mal-con­trol trac­tor unit from the 1960s. The name had orig­i­nally been used on Maud­slay lor­ries.

Monarch

The orig­i­nal AEC Monarch was built from 1931 to 1939 at AEC’s Southall works. The first ver­sion (Model 641) was su­per­seded by the Mk II (Model 637) in 1933, with pay­load in­creased to 7½ tons. The Monarch was fit­ted with ei­ther an 85 hp (63 kW) four-cylin­der 5.1-litre diesel en­gine or an 80 hp four-cylin­der 5.1-litre petrol en­gine. This was a ro­bust and well-de­signed lorry, pop­u­lar with both dri­vers and op­er­a­tors. Later vari­ants con­tin­ued into the 1970s.

 TL 3513 (1934) KYE 402 (1949)

The Monarch name was res­ur­rected for ex­port ver­sions of the Mer­cury built from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Mustang

1950s

Model 201

Model 428

Model 501 & 506

Model 701

Y Type

AEC’s first pur­pose-built com­mer­cial ve­hi­cle was in­tro­duced in 1916. The im­proved YA Type ap­peared in 1917. More than ten thou­sand of these ve­hi­cles were sup­plied to the War De­part­ment by 1919. Many of these were ac­quired by civil­ian op­er­a­tors fol­low­ing the war. YB and YC Types con­tin­ued in pro­duc­tion until 1921.

Railcar engines

Main articles: GWR railcars, British Rail British United Traction, and AEC railmotor

Centenary celebrations

2012 was the cen­te­nary of the found­ing of AEC Ltd, and to mark this, a num­ber of events took place through­out the year. By far the biggest was hosted by The AEC So­ci­ety, and was held over the week­end of 26 and 27 May 2012 at Newark Show­ground in Not­ting­hamshire. It was the biggest ever gath­er­ing of AEC’s, and over 225 AEC ve­hi­cles at­tended as well as over 350 ve­hi­cles of other mar­ques. It was the biggest rally ever held by The AEC So­ci­ety and as well as glo­ri­ous weather all week­end, was closed by a BBMF fly­past.

See also

AEC bus in Malta

• Crossley Motors
• Daimler
• Guy Motors
• Leyland Motors

References

1. ^ “From omnibus to ecobus, 1829-1850”. London Transport Museum. Archived from the original on 9 June 2007. Retrieved 3 July 2007.
2. ^ “From omnibus to ecobus, 1919-1938, 4th page”. London Transport Museum. Archived from the original on 9 June 2007. Retrieved 3 July 2007.
3. ^ “From omnibus to ecobus, 1919-1938, 3rd page”. London Transport Museum. Archived from the original on 8 June 2007. Retrieved 3 July 2007.
4. ^ “Contact Us - Moseley Coach Sales”. Retrieved 6 October 2014.

External links

AEC (Associated Equipment Company).

• AEC Society
• Remembering AEC
• The AEC Bus Site
• AEC Matador and Militant Owners Club
• The British/Portuguese UTIC AEC Coaches
• Page on ALSA’s ACLO buses
• Home of a famous Militant Mk1
• Catalogue of the AEC archives, held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick

AEC vehicle model range

Buses

a blog about AEC Buses I made in 2013:

Buses AEC Associated Equipment Company Ltd England UK

Trucks

AEC Southall Models

I can’t find any pictures on the WWW about AEC 4G6

• 4G6

AEC 10 Ton Knocker

AEC Mandator 10Ton 4×2 Tractor (1493RN)

AEC made also Railcars and some of them are also called 10, so I show you some pictures:

1938 AEC 10-ton diesel railcar

1955-fwk-som-10rm 102hp Walker 10RM substitutes for the regular AEC railmotor between Fawkner and Somerton

AEC RAIL MOTOR No.10

AEC Dumptruck 10 cu yd ( model 3673M )

• 10

AEC 18 cu yd ‘Dumptruck

• 18

Also nothing to find about AEC 201

• 201

It’s impossible to know what they mean by AEC 428. I can’t find anything than numberplates with 428.

• 428
• 501

AEC 506 ENGINE. SAME AS A 505 BUT A LATER ENGINE

• 506

AEC 691T = a trolleybus from 1933

• 691
• 692

• 701
• 1100

• Majestic
• Mammoth
• Mammoth Major
• Mandator
• Marshall
• Matador
• Mercury
• Militant
• Mammoth Minor 6
• Mammoth Minor 8
• Mogul
• Monarch
• Mustang
• TG6
• Y Type

Engines

• AEC 9.6L
• AEC 11.3L

Related companies

• ACLO
• Barreiros AEC
• British Leyland
• British United Traction
• Charles H Roe
• Crossley Motors
• Maudslay Motor Company
• Park Royal Vehicles
• Thornycroft
• UTIC-AEC

I will give you my complete collection that I gathered in the last years on the World Wide Web.

1961 aec matador mkII 4gm4ra k1

That was it what AEC Truck concerning. The buses can you find on another blog about AEC Buses made earlier in 2013.

https://myntransportblog.com/2013/10/28/buses-aec-associated-equipment-company-ltd-england-uk/