Chalmer & Hoyer

Last updated

Chalmer & Hoyer was a British coach-building company with premises in Poole, Dorset and Weybridge, Surrey. In 1926 the company name changed to the Hoyal Body Corporation Ltd.

Contents

History

1926 Morris Oxford with Chalmer & Hoyer coachwork 1926 Morris Oxford Landaulette by Chalmer & Hoyer.jpg
1926 Morris Oxford with Chalmer & Hoyer coachwork
1927 Star with Hoyal coachwork 1927 Star 1440 Columbia Coupe 9188478074.jpg
1927 Star with Hoyal coachwork

The company was founded in 1921 by Yorkshire-born Ernest Chalmer (formerly Jens Ernst Schmidt), Danish born Henry Hamilton Hoyer (formerly Henrik Therigaard Højer) and Surrey-born Henry William Allingham (a different man from WW1 veteran Henry Allingham, who lived to be the world's oldest man). They took over a former aircraft factory in Hamworthy near Poole, to build private and light commercial vehicle bodies and motor boats [1] and set up a head office at 41 Charing Cross Road, London. The company policy, largely derived from Allingham's earlier experience in working in industry in the USA was not to seek individual customers but to deal with volume sales to motor manufacturers. It would achieve this either by providing the maker with bodies or providing extra coachwork designs under its own name.

In 1924 Chalmer and Hoyer took over the empty works of Lang Propellers in Weybridge. A major contract had been agreed with Morris to provide closed bodies for the Oxford model and by 1925 this accounted for almost the entire output of Weybridge.

The company took a stand at the London Motor Show from 1922 until 1930. In 1923 they showed a Bentley with Weymann coachwork, being the first British coachbuilder to take out a licence. They were also one of the first British coachbuilders to install a plant for spraying cellulose paint.

In 1926 Morris opened its Pressed Steel factory and moved over to steel bodied cars, subsequently giving the Weybridge works much less work to do beyond a limited number bodies for Chrysler, Daimler and other higher priced makes. In the same year the company was renamed as the Hoyal Body Corporation, taking a brand name they had been using for some time, composed of the first letters of Hoyer and Allingham. [1]

In 1926, Chalmer & Hoyer was renamed the Hoyal Body Corporation Ltd after Chalmer left the company. Hoyer and Allingham became joint managing directors.

After losing the Morris contract Hoyal concentrated on their established bus and coach bodies mostly on Daimler Company, Tilling-Stevens and Dennis Brothers chassis and luxury car coachwork for more expensive makes at Weybridge, and on boat building at Poole. Orders for individual body designs were now also welcomed but the company was losing money and in August 1931 a receiver was appointed, Hoyal went into voluntary liquidation and was closed down in 1932.

Aftermath

Two of Hoyal's employees, John Dalrymple and Charles Livesay purchased some of the equipment and tooling and set up as John Charles & Co near Kew Gardens, London.

Henry Allingham went on to form his own company, Vehicle Developments Ltd. Here, until the late 1930s he sourced special bodies from other coachbuilders for car makers such as Rover, MG and Vauxhall. He also designed standard pressed steel body parts for drop head coupes, which he marketed under the Sandringham brand. The steel components for these bodies were designed in cooperation with Ambi-Budd in Germany.

Notes

  1. 1 2 A-Z of British Coachbuilders. Nick Walker. Bay View Books 1997. ISBN   1-870979-93-1

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British Leyland</span> 1968–1986 automotive manufacturing conglomerate

British Leyland was an automotive engineering and manufacturing conglomerate formed in the United Kingdom in 1968 as British Leyland Motor Corporation Ltd (BLMC), following the merger of Leyland Motors and British Motor Holdings. It was partly nationalised in 1975, when the UK government created a holding company called British Leyland, later renamed BL in 1978. It incorporated much of the British-owned motor vehicle industry, which in 1968 had a 40% share of the UK car market, with its history going back to 1895. Despite containing profitable marques such as Jaguar, Rover, and Land Rover, as well as the best-selling Mini, BLMC had a troubled history, leading to its eventual collapse in 1975 and subsequent part-nationalisation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vanden Plas</span> Coachbuilder

Vanden Plas is the name of coachbuilders who produced bodies for specialist and up-market automobile manufacturers. Latterly the name became a top-end luxury model designation for cars from subsidiaries of British Leyland and the Rover Group, being last used in 2009 to denote the top-luxury version of the Jaguar XJ (X350).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coachbuilder</span> Maker of bodies for passenger-carrying vehicles

A coachbuilder or body-maker is a person or company who manufactures bodies for passenger-carrying vehicles. Coachwork is the body of an automobile, bus, horse-drawn carriage, or railway carriage. The word "coach" was derived from the Hungarian town of Kocs. A vehicle body constructed by a coachbuilder may be called a "coachbuilt body" or "custom body".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duple Coachbuilders</span> English coach and bus body manufacturer (1919-1989)

Duple Coachbuilders was a coach and bus bodybuilder in England from 1919 until 1989.

Carbodies was a taxi design and manufacturing company based in Coventry, England. In its latter years it also traded as London Taxis International and The London Taxi Company.

Park Ward was a British coachbuilder founded in 1919 which operated from Willesden in North London. In the 1930s, backed by Rolls-Royce Limited, it made technical advances which enabled the building of all-steel bodies to Rolls-Royce's high standards. Bought by Rolls-Royce in 1939, it merged with H. J. Mulliner & Co. in 1961 to form Mulliner Park Ward.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thrupp & Maberly</span> British coachbuilding company

Thrupp & Maberly was a British coachbuilding business based in the West End of London, England. Coach-makers to Queen Victoria they operated for more than two centuries until 1967 when they closed while in the ownership of Rootes Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pressed Steel Company</span> British car body manufacturer active since 2021

Pressed Steel Company Limited was a British car body manufacturing business founded at Cowley near Oxford in 1926 as a joint venture between William Morris, Budd Corporation of Philadelphia USA, which held the controlling interest, and a British / American bank J. Henry Schroder & Co. At that time the company was named The Pressed Steel Company of Great Britain Limited. It acquired Budd's patent rights and processes for use in the United Kingdom. Morris transferred his interest to his company, Morris Motors Limited.

The Grose was an English automobile built between 1898 and 1901, Grose also built bodies for cars, buses, ambulances and commercial vehicles until the late 1950s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hooper (coachbuilder)</span> British coachbuilding business

Hooper & Co. was a British coachbuilding business for many years based in Westminster London. From 1805 to 1959 it was a notably successful maker, to special order, of luxury carriages, both horse-drawn and motor-powered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles H. Roe</span> British bus manufacturing company

Charles H Roe was a Yorkshire coachbuilding company. It was for most of its life based at Crossgates Carriage Works, in Leeds.

Abbott of Farnham, E D Abbott Limited was a British coachbuilding business based in Farnham, Surrey, trading under that name from 1929. A major part of their output was under sub-contract to motor vehicle manufacturers. The business closed in 1972.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weymann Fabric Bodies</span> Franco-British patented lightweight structural system for car and aircraft bodies

Weymann Fabric Bodies is a patented design system for fuselages for aircraft and superlight coachwork for motor vehicles. The system used a patent-jointed wood frame covered in fabric. It was popular on cars from the 1920s until the early 1930s as it reduced the usual squeaks and rattles of coachbuilt bodies by its use of flexible joints between body timbers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cunard (coachbuilder)</span> British coachbuilder

The Cunard Motor & Carriage company was a British vehicle coachbuilder. It was founded in London in 1911 and continued in various forms up to the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daimler Roadliner</span> Motor vehicle

The Daimler Roadliner was a single-decker bus and coach chassis built by Daimler between 1962 and 1972. Notoriously unreliable, it topped the 1993 poll by readers of Classic Bus as the worst bus type ever, beating the Guy Wulfrunian into second place. It was very technologically advanced, offering step-free access some 20 years before other buses; as a coach, it was felt by industry commentators to be in advance of contemporary UK designs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J Gurney Nutting & Co</span> English bespoke coachbuilder

J Gurney Nutting & Co Limited was an English firm of bespoke coachbuilders specialising in sporting bodies founded in 1918 as a new enterprise by a Croydon firm of builders and joiners of the same name. The senior partner was John (Jack) Gurney Nutting (1871–1946).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barker (coachbuilder)</span> British coachbuilder

Barker & Co. was a British coachbuilder, a maker of carriages and in the 20th century bodywork for prestige cars, including Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Daimler.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corsica Coachworks</span> British coachbuilding business

Corsica Coachworks was a small British coachbuilding business founded in 1920 just after World War I. They were builders of bespoke car bodies, employing no in-house designer. They realised customers' designs for them. Almost every Corsica body is unique.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carlton Carriage Company</span> English coachbuilder

The Carlton Carriage Company was a London coachbuilder that provided bespoke coachwork for some of the finest car makers of the 1920s and 1930s. They are best known for their drophead coupes which are archetypal designs of the British Jazz Era.

John Charles & Co was a British coachbuilding company founded in 1932 and based initially near Kew Gardens, London.