As part of our long-running series on car manufacture as a tool for achieving bankruptcy, we thought of presenting the Frazer Nash saga. Then we noticed something odd: the company never quite went out of business. It's true that founder Archibald Frazer-Nash and his modest motor works skidded into receivership in 1927, three years after starting production of his spindly little roadsters. But then the Aldington brothers bought the concern in 1929, and kept it going through the end of the chain-drive era and (against all odds) into postwar success as England's Porsche distributor. The chain-drive cars, though, were among the first sports cars to be recognized as classics, and it's their aura which interests us here. Minimalism wasn't much of a word in 1930, but it's hard to look at a Frazer Nash chassis from that year without having it float to the top of your mind. It's a car that made an impression because of the things it lacked. The list begins famously with the absent gearbox and continues with the absent differential, missing driver's door on most models, and largely absent weather protection. Forget about effete nonsense like bumpers, radios and heaters. In fact, forget about having the shifter and the emergency brake inside the car. If you wanted to operate the shift, you'd hang your arm outside, and if it was raining (nearly every Frazer Nash lived in the British Isles) your arm got wet. But then again, Frazer Nash tops were sketchy (when present at all) and time-consuming to erect, so in the event of rain you were likely getting soaked anyway...
Wait a minute, we just mentioned the shifter after telling you there was no gearbox. A contradiction? Time for a bit of history. In 1910 Archie Frazer-Nash formed a partnership with H.R. Godfrey to make the G.N. cycle car. In those early motoring days, cycle cars were a modest step up from drafty, hazardous motorcycles. They offered the added stability of 3 wheels (the Morgan trike) or 4 (Amilcar, G.N.), and usually space for two smallish, friendly people. In order to save weight and cost, Godfrey and Nash came up with a chain drive and dog-clutch system, with different diameter sprockets offering various speeds as on a bicycle. There was a separate idler shaft for the reverse effect; the diagram below also shows the quarter-elliptic springs which were the source of the car's memorable ride qualities (think of an unhappy wild pony). When a move upmarket failed and G.N. wound down, Archie Frazer-Nash took his chain-drive system and some G.N. parts, and started making cars on his own. It was 1924...
Specialist car builders in Roaring Twenties England were catering to racing aristocrats, and to possibly less-expensive thrill-seeking by men (and some women) who'd managed to survive the Great War, and saw nothing especially scary about racing up a muddy hill in a flimsy little car which exposed you to the elements almost as much as a motorcycle. Hill climbs became popular contests, and none was more famous than the one at Shelsley Walsh, which gave its name to the twin-supercharged s.o.h.c. 4 cylinder Frazer Nash Shelsley model. Unlike G.N. which made its own two-cylinder engine, Frazer Nash usually sourced its engines from specialist suppliers, including Meadows, Anzani and Blackburne, which made a refined twin overhead cam six, at 1,657 cc the biggest of chain-drive 'Nashes. After being purchased by Frazer Nash, the British Anzani division built the overhead cam 4-cylinder Gough-designed engine across the street from the AFN works. None of the cars had differentials, so there was a bit of sliding in the rain and on tight corners. Steering was startlingly quick, as little as 7/8 of a turn lock to lock on some models. The great automotive writer Ralph Stein likened driving a Frazer Nash to being on two motorcycles bolted together...
The magic never faded, but the business of selling chain-drives suffered from competition with upstarts like Jaguar, which offered bourgeois luxuries like interior shift levers, windshield wipers, and even heaters. Production slowed to a trickle, with only one chain-drive car produced in 1939, by which time Frazer Nash had signed up to distribute BMWs in England, an effort derailed by war. The loyalty and enthusiasm inspired by the chain-drive Frazer Nash greatly exceeded what would be expected from a total production of 350 cars. A high percentage have survived, along with this limerick about them:
Made a car with chains and dogs.
It worked. But I wonder, would it if
They had made it with a diff.?*
*Footnote: The Frazer Nash was, of course, unrelated to the American Nash or to the Frazer produced by Kaiser-Frazer in the USA. The author of our limerick is unknown, but it was popular in England's Vintage Sports Car Club, and I found it in William Boddy's The Sports Car Pocketbook, from Sports Car Press, New York, 1961. If you need help telling a Schneider from a Salmson or a Senechal, Boddy's your man.
*Footnote: The Frazer Nash was, of course, unrelated to the American Nash or to the Frazer produced by Kaiser-Frazer in the USA. The author of our limerick is unknown, but it was popular in England's Vintage Sports Car Club, and I found it in William Boddy's The Sports Car Pocketbook, from Sports Car Press, New York, 1961. If you need help telling a Schneider from a Salmson or a Senechal, Boddy's your man.
Errata: We'd originally credited the Albert Gough-designed Frazer Nash SOHC engine to an outside contractor, but as Frazer Nash vintage racer Erich Volkstorf points out in his expert notes in the Comments section, by the time British Anzani made this engine it was owned by AFN Ltd.
Bibliography: Beyond The Sports Car Pocketbook, our sources were the following:
The Great Cars by Ralph Stein, Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1967.
Automobile Quarterly Magazine, 1st Quarter 1973, Vol. XI, Number 1. The Frazer Nash issue, including "Tales of the Chain Gang and Other Stories" by Bill Morgan, and "Chain Gang Impressions."
Frazer Nash by David Thirlby, Haynes Publishing, Somerset, England, 1977.
Photo Credits:
Top: giddins@porsche.blogspot.com
2nd: Giddins Racing
3rd: oppositelock.com
Bottom: Linda La Fond
Photo Credits:
Top: giddins@porsche.blogspot.com
2nd: Giddins Racing
3rd: oppositelock.com
Bottom: Linda La Fond
Mostly quite accurate, but a few corrections are needed. Firstly, the Gough engine was designed and produced in house. As well, the British Anzani engine designed by Gustave MacClure, though designed outside of FN, became a Frazer Nash product when Archie bought the company.
ReplyDeleteI'll also add that weather protection was generally as good as other open cars of the period and better than some. The hoods(tops) are easily erected and side curtains are available. I'll also not that the early cars were powered by an overhead valve Power Plus engine.
DeleteI want to thank Erich for his clarification on the origin of Albert Gough's engine, officially called the Frazer Nash overhead cam engine. In the Frazer Nash issue of AQ, Bill Morgan notes that AFN Ltd. bought British Anzani in 1932, and that the Gough engine was built at the Anzani works, with only 26 units completed. So these engines were indeed built by an AFN company, even if not at the same workshops where AFN chassis were crafted. Both Morgan and David Thirlby comment that these engines didn't receive the development time they needed.
DeleteAlso, on the subject of weather protection, Ralph Stein in The Great Cars noted that in response to the low priority of weather protection at Frazer Nash and other British makes, after-market suppliers offered something called a "dri-sleeve". I rest my case.
ReplyDeleteHi Robert, it's a bit more complex. British Anzani was in deep financial straits and was reformed in 1925 as British Vulpine. But it again got into a financial issues a one Eric Burt approached Archie and a deal was struct to buy British Vulpine in late '26. By 1927, the leases were up and Archie moved the company across the alley from the FN works. I'm not sure where Morgan got his info about 1932. By that point, Archie had been out of the company for several years as the Aldingtons had taken over the company after Archie fell ill in 1929. A good source for all this is the Thirlby books, as well as the archives. I have a Frazer Nash, a 1927 Boulogne with an extensive history and have raced it at Prescott and othe venues in the UK, as well as Raids.
DeleteI'm familiar with the dry sleeve, though have never used such a thing. My Boulogne has two fixings for the hood on the top of the windscreen at a time when other cars had multiple lift a dot fastenings a separate hood frames.
ReplyDeleteThanks again Mr. Volkstorf, for correcting the record. Apparently misinformation was not invented in the Internet era, though that made it easier to spread. We wonder what else might be wrong, such as the number of Gough engines built, etc. As a Frazer Nash owner and racer, you could probably forget more about these cars over a good bottle of wine than I will ever know. I do know something about design though, and have always admired the way there seems to be nothing on a Frazer Nash just for decoration. Everything seems to be there because it has a job to do. You could say the same thing, for example, about a Bugatti Type 35. And it's probably not a coincidence that the chain-drive Frazer Nash and the Type 35 were among the first sporting cars to be considered classics.
DeleteHi Robert, sorry for all the clarifications. Thirlby's books are the best source for the FN and the later one corrects some of the errors of the first one. The archives also help. What is helpful is knowing that perhaps more than any other similar make, the chain drive Frazer Nashe's were built to buyer's preferences, and sometimes even seller's preferences. The Aldingtons in the twenties, fitted Marles steering boxes, which Archie didn't like. As well, besides engines, one could specify state of tune, wheelbase and number of seats. Electrical equipment like mags could be Bosch, Lucas or BTH. Add that today, there is hardly such a thing as an original Nash as it left the Works, and it is difficult to say what it is. My car had its mag changed from BTH to Lucas before the 29 London to Edinburgh trial. The facination I have with these cars and those like them, is that you could specify many things making them essentially one off creations. If you ever get to the vintage Prescott, you would be amazed at the number of prewar cars competing. There were 270 on the grid last summer, all driven quite hard. Not anything like it here in the US. And even the more touring type cars get driven regularly on trips across Europe and not sitting in a museum.Cheers, Erich
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