You might guess that the overhead shot above is focused on some kind of Jaguar, maybe a prototype for the XK120, or a rare 4-passenger version of that famous roadster by one of England's coach builders. And it wouldn't be a bad guess, as the blue car is British, and from the same era. It's really a 1950 Lea-Francis 2.5 Litre Westlands Sports, and involves a tale of bankruptcy, engineering innovation, Formula 2 racing, design disaster, and bankruptcy again. R.H. Lea and G.I. Francis started building cars in 1903 and motorcycles in 1911, mostly as a subcontractor to Singer Motors, until in 1919 they began building Lea-Francis cars from components purchased from outside suppliers. The 1927 Type M Lea-Francis below shows off a polished aluminum bonnet to an audience in New Zealand. Below that bonnet, the original engine would've been a 1.5 liter overhead valve 4ED inline four from Meadows; other engines in the L-F lineup included a 1.3 liter four and a 1.7 liter inline 6. Suspension was by solid axles, and brakes were mechanical...
…as they were on the Type S that came along the next year. The Hyper Type S, or Hyper Sports shown below, built from 1928 to 1931, was the first brush by Lea-Francis with fame. The first production British supercharged automobile, it featured a 1.5 liter overhead valve Meadows inline 4 with Cozette supercharger. The car won the Ulster TT race in 1928, so Lea-Francis was becoming a household name (at least among the racing fraternity) when the Crash of 1929 brought hard times in the early Thirties…
The slanting radiator was a trademark feature of the Type S. Some examples, like the one below, had fabric bodies.
After building 185 Hyper Type S models, the company found it was sailing into the headwinds of the Great Depression. After bankruptcy, it was reorganized under new management, and Hugh Rose, an engineer who had designed the twin-cam engine in Rileys and ERAs, designed a similar engine with twin cams on the sides of the engine block, and rocker-operated valves in hemispherical combustion chambers. Nicknamed the "underhead cam" engine, it found a home under the hood of this silver Corsica-bodied 14 Sports in 1938, the year after the new Lea-Francis regime announced its redesigned wares to the public.
Three of the Corsica-bodied Sports were built; a company director also had Carlton Coachworks build the Sports model shown below. Despite its scruffy condition, it justifies a restoration; after all, there's only one car like it. Just as the new Rose-engineered cars were beginning to make an impression, the outbreak of war put an end to production of civilian passenger cars. The reorganized Lea-Francis concern had produced just 83 of its new cars.
Amazingly, just 9 months after we'd posted the above photos of the unrestored FYW622, the same car showed up after restoration at the Coffee & Classics event in Boulder, Colorado...
When we found the photos of this car in unrestored condition, it was listed as a 14 (taxable) hp model on the Bonhams Auction website. The new owner identified this Carlton-bodied car as a 12 hp model. The 12 is a 1.5 liter engine, while the 14 is just under 1.8 liters.
The same "underhead cam" 4-cylinder engine design would be applied to engine sizes up to 2.5 liters in the postwar period.
The level of attention given to the restoration is apparent when comparing these photos with the shots of the unrestored FYW622.
After World War 2, Westlands* Coachworks, which had also built bodies for Healey*, built just 29 examples of the graceful coupe below; this one is from 1948. Traditional separate elements like headlights, upright radiator, and sweeping fenders are proportioned to make the short chassis appear longer, and the glassy arc of the roof is almost modern...
In 1947 Lea-Francis released the 14 hp Sports, a 2-passenger roadster. The first few cars had the 1.5 liter, 70 hp engine, but soon the engne was changed to the 1.8 liter with up to 87 hp. Twin carbs and high-lift cams were featured, but the design retained a rigid front axle and rod-operated mechanical brakes. The last 3 of the 111 cars built by 1949 featured independent front suspension and hydro-mechanical brakes...
The 2.5 Liter Sports introduced midway through 1949 was more than just a re-engined version of the 14 hp Sports. It featured independent front suspension and hydro-mechanical brakes (with full hydraulics on the last few built), as well as a subtly different body, with winding windows replacing the side curtains of the earlier car. Note also that the embryonic running boards between the fenders are gone, and the grille narrows more towards the base. Overall, it was a fine-performing remodel with up to 120 hp on tap. Too bad it had to compete with the new XK120 from Jaguar; only 85 were sold. At the same time, though, racing specialists Connaught* were adopting the Lea-Francis engine and chassis for their L2 sports cars and road racer L3. In 2-liter form, it appeared in their Formula 2 chassis in 1952, and later in the F2-based 1.5 liter Connaught AL/SR sports racer, which Stirling Moss raced. Late examples of the Connaught F2 used a version of the aluminum block L-F developed in an effort to compete with Offenhauser midget racing engines in the US. So Lea-Francis engines were making racing news again...
The year after the "standard" 2.5 Litre Sports appeared, Westlands* built the blue 2.5 Litre Sports 4-passenger below. The fender line is a bit more modern than the standard car, with front fenders meeting the rear with unbroken flanks, like those on the Jaguar XK120. The design predicts that of the special Abbott-bodied 4-passenger XK120 that appeared a year later in 1951. The Westlands 4-passenger seems to have a bit more wheelbase than the 99 inches of the standard 2-passenger L-F.
The sketchy top and full instrumentation emphasize the sporting character of this car...
…as does the 2.5 liter inline four, developed post-war by Hugh Rose with the high cams of the smaller engine, but separate rocker boxes and twin carbs shown here. Power for the 2.5 liter ranged from 100 to 120 bhp. Only one of the 2.5 liter Westlands 4-passenger roadsters was built, with the others of the estimated dozen to thirty built being of the 1.8 liter variety. Lea-Francis sales declined by the time the new 2.5 liter engine went into production, as the company was forced to compete with the higher-performance Jaguars, and the mass-produced "performance at a price" available from the Triumph TR2 and sleek Austin-Healey 100, both introduced in 1953. Efforts to promote the L-F engine to midget racers in the USA didn't succeed, and somehow the racing exploits of the Connaught team failed to help the Lea-Francis bottom line.
The car-building part of Lea-Francis succumbed to all that competition in 1954, and the company survived as a maker of farm equipment until 1960, when L-F built and exhibited 3 Lynx* prototypes on a tubular chassis design from 1948, updated with disc brakes and a 2.6 liter Ford Zephyr six. All had the same blimp-like styling, and despite an eye-catching (to put it kindly) show car in mauve and gold, failed to garner any orders from customers. As the financially-strapped company couldn't build any production versions without those customer deposits, that was the end of the Lynx, and of car production at Lea Francis.
Postscript:
We updated this post when the Carlton-bodied car, FYW622, pictured before restoration in England, appeared at the Boulder Coffee and Classics event in April.
*Footnote:
The Westlands-bodied Healey models are depicted in "Forgotten Classic: Healey, Before and After Austin", posted here on October 11, 2022. The Connaught Formula 2 racers and sports cars powered by Lea-Francis engines are shown in "Celtic Rainmaker: Connaught Ended the Longest Drought in Grand Prix Racing", posted July 24, 2016. Finally, the design of the Lea Francis Lynx is analyzed in detail in "Worst Car Designs Ever, Part 2: Plastic Promise, Plastic Peril", in our archives for July 31, 2016.
Photo Credits:
Top: historics.co.uk
2nd: Louis Bialy
3rd: myclassicuk.com
4th: flickr.com
5th: Wikimedia
6th: flickr.com
7th & 8th: bonhams.com
9th thru 12th: the author
13th: postwarclassic.com
14th & 15th: Brightwells Classic Cars
16th: Dore and Rees Classic Cars
17th: flickr.com
18th: collectableclassiccars.com.au
19th thru 23rd: historics.co.uk
Bottom: telegraph.co.uk
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