| Dawson 11-12 | |
|---|---|
| Overview | |
| Manufacturer | Dawson Car Company |
| Production | 1919-1921 |
| Assembly | Clay Lane, Stoke, Coventry, England |
| Designer | A J Dawson |
| Body and chassis | |
| Body style | open two-seat open four-seat coupé closed coupé |
| Powertrain | |
| Engine | 1795 cc, four-cylinder, overhead-cam |
| Transmission | three-speed manual |
| Dimensions | |
| Wheelbase | 105 inches (2667 mm) [1] |
| Length | 142 inches (3607 mm) [1] |
The Dawson Car Company was formed in June 1918 by AJ Dawson, previously works manager at Hillman and designer of the 1913 Hillman Nine car and launched in 1919.
Hillman is a British automobile marque created by the Hillman Motor Car Company, founded in 1907. The company was based in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, near Coventry, England. Before 1907 the company had built bicycles. Newly under the control of the Rootes brothers, the Hillman company was acquired by Humber in 1928. Hillman was used as the small car marque of Humber Limited from 1931, but until 1937 Hillman did continue to sell large cars. The Rootes brothers reached a sixty per cent holding of Humber in 1932 which they retained until 1967, when Chrysler bought Rootes and bought out the other forty per cent of shareholders in Humber. The marque continued to be used under Chrysler until 1976.
The only car made by the company was the 11-12 hp with a water-cooled, four-cylinder 1795 cc overhead camshaft engine coupled to a three-speed gearbox. It was available in four body styles, most bodied by Charlesworth, and unusually, customers could not buy a chassis only. Most were sold in Dawson Blue with black wings. Final production seems to have been in 1921 after about 65 cars were made. [2]
The inline-four engine or straight-four engine is a type of inline internal combustion four-cylinder engine with all four cylinders mounted in a straight line, or plane along the crankcase. The single bank of cylinders may be oriented in either a vertical or an inclined plane with all the pistons driving a common crankshaft. Where it is inclined, it is sometimes called a slant-four. In a specification chart or when an abbreviation is used, an inline-four engine is listed either as I4 or L4.
Overhead camshaft, commonly abbreviated to OHC, is a valvetrain configuration which places the camshaft of an internal combustion engine of the reciprocating type within the cylinder heads and drives the valves or lifters in a more direct manner compared with overhead valves (OHV) and pushrods.
Charlesworth Bodies Limited of Much Park Street, Coventry, owned a coachbuilding business that had been founded in 1907 by three partners: Gray, Hill and Steane.
The Dawson cars were expensive, the cheapest being £600 for the two-seater, and could not compete with Morris and Austin. Nearly all the components were made in-house.
Morris Motors Limited was a British privately owned motor vehicle manufacturing company formed in 1919 to take over the assets of William Morris's WRM Motors Limited and continue production of the same vehicles. By 1926 its production represented 42 per cent of British car manufacture — a remarkable expansion rate attributed to William Morris's practice of buying in major as well as minor components and assembling them in his own factory. Self-financing through his enormous profits Morris did borrow some money from the public in 1926 and later shared some of Morris Motors' ownership with the public in 1936 when the new capital was used by Morris Motors to buy many of his other privately held businesses.
The Austin Motor Company Limited was a British manufacturer of motor vehicles, founded in 1905 by Herbert Austin. In 1952 it was merged with Morris Motors Limited in the new holding company British Motor Corporation (BMC) Limited, keeping its separate identity. The marque Austin was used until 1987. The trademark is currently owned by SAIC after being transferred from bankrupt subsidiary Nanjing Automotive which had acquired it with MG Rover Group in July 2005.
In 1921 the Triumph Cycle Company Ltd. bought Dawson's premises and fittings in Clay Lane, Stoke, Coventry but no more of the 11-12 models were made.
The Triumph Motor Company was a British car and motor manufacturing company in the 19th and 20th centuries. The marque had its origins in 1885 when Siegfried Bettmann of Nuremberg formed S. Bettmann & Co. and started importing bicycles from Europe and selling them under his own trade name in London. The trade name became "Triumph" the following year, and in 1887 Bettmann was joined by a partner, Moritz Schulte, also from Germany. In 1889, the businessmen started producing their own bicycles in Coventry, England.
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England.
