Allard / Cole Allard

The Complete Story
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-78500-560-2
Verlag: Crowood
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

The remarkable story of everything Sydney Herbert Allard achieved in motor sport and motor car manufacture is framed in an up-to-date commentary co-authored by his own son. This is a tribute unswayed by legend, but based on the facts and achievements of his eponymous company. With contributions from the Allard Owners' Club and Allard Register, this book contains painstaking research of Allard history from 1929 to the present day, including previously unpublished material. Just under 2,000 Allards were built, and approximately 510 are believed to remain on the road or known to be under -restoration. More await discovery - even as this book was being written, one of Sydney's long-lost 1930s 'Allard Specials' has been found after years being forgotten. Other topics covered in this remarkable book include: car-by-car engineering and design details; unseen ideas and projects; the history of the Allard marque in motor sport and the Allard story in the USA. Finally, it features the Allard Owner's Club, Allard Register, members and their cars.

Alan Allard is the son of the marque's founder, Sydney Allard, and is also a significant motor sport and engineering figure in his own right - a pioneering, record-holding British dragster driver, national class rally driver, and the man behind the further development of supercharging. Today Alan leads the Allard Motor Company as it launches its new 'continuation' chassis built by Alan and his son, Lloyd. Younger son Gavin curates the Allard archives. Alan and his family are key supporters of the Allard Owners Club.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Allard, Alan

Cole, Lance

Leseproben

16 May 1936 – Sydney on the banking at Brooklands in his first Allard Special CLK5.

CHAPTER 1

SYDNEY HERBERT ALLARD was born on 10 June 1910 in Streatham, southwest London. He was the second of five children, his elder brother being John Arthur Francis, known as ‘Jack’. After Sydney there came two twin brothers, Dennis and Leslie, followed by the youngest Allard, Mary, the only girl. All the boys were educated at Ardingly College in Sussex. The unusual name ‘Allard’ may have Dutch or Flemish origins: it can still be found in telephone directories in the Netherlands, Belgium and France as Allard or its variant,Allaert.

Their father, Arthur William Allard, was a director of Allard and Saunders Ltd, and a successful master builder and property owner, who was consulted by the architects during the building of Guildford Cathedral. The flats that Arthur built in the 1930s at Millbrooke Court on Keswick Road, Putney, however, were bombed by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War.

Unlike some of the aspiring British car manufacturers and racers of that era, the young Sydney did not come from a privileged family, as the Allard family were not from the upper crust or old money. Instead they came from farming stock and for several generations had been agricultural workers based at Upper Deverill in the beautiful Wylye valley in Wiltshire, between Warminster and Mere. The decline in agriculture in the late Victorian era, following on from the effects of the war in the Crimea and social change, saw the Allard family move to London to seek more secure employment. Sydney’s father had trained as a slate layer and general builder before he used his intellect to establish his own small business. So the Allards knew about hard graft, even if they would go on to live a comfortable post-Edwardian existence with a view over Wandsworth Common.

In the early 1930s, just before building his first Allard Special CLK 5, Sydney campaigned a Ford TT in trials events. The TT had been part of a Ford-supported team effort prior to sale.

At the time of his birth the family lived at 25 West Side, Wandsworth Common, but Sydney was to grow up in a house named ‘Uplands’ in Leigham Court Road, Streatham. The 1911 Census shows that also living there were a cousin named Phillip, aged 16, and a domestic servant called Lizzie Cole. Arthur Allard’s Allard's job was stated as ‘Slate Trade’; in another entry he is given as a ‘Surveyor’.

Sydney Herbert Allard was tall and sturdy. As well as wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, he had a damaged right eye as a result of a boyhood injury sustained by an airgun pellet fired in a mock fight by his brother Dennis. Yet the eye problem never seemed to affect his abilities and Sydney was undoubtedly a talented driver. This was the era of shirt-sleeved drivers and no seat belts. On several occasions in later years Sydney was even seen racing in a sports jacket and tie, but he was not a toff, a playboy or, in any sense, a man ‘on the make’. He simply thought about cars, drew cars, chopped up cars and welded them back together again until one day he created a car of his own conception. From there came the brand.

Sydney’s brothers were avid motorcycle enthusiasts who shared the family’s wheeled obsession. William Boddy, Editor of , who was a big Allard fan, described Sydney and his brothers as ‘pretty wild, even as youngsters go’. Dennis Allard, who had survived a major accident on his Brough Superior when he was just 21, was sadly killed in a cycling accident on his way to the Brighton Speed Trial in the 1950s. His twin, Leslie, would have an interest in both two- and four-wheeled devices.

The first four-wheeled car was a one-off ‘special’ modified Morgan. It was emphatically not a fully fledged ‘Allard Special’. Sydney carried out extensive work on his Morgan to convert it from three wheels to four in a vain attempt to make it more suitable for trialling.

Sydney’s boyhood was surrounded by younger brothers who fettled and tweaked their motorcycles. Sydney learned to ride on a Francis-Barnett and moved on to a Douglas with a flat-twin engine. He learned to drive at the age of 16, soon after leaving Ardingly College. He decided not to join the family building business, and instead started work in a garage, F.W. Lucas. Evening courses in engineering at Battersea Polytechnic enabled him to become accredited with the Institute of Engineers. Beginning as a fitters mate, earning a few shillings a week, Sydney worked his way up through hands-on experience as a mechanical engineer. Admittedly there was family money and a good education behind him, but his father was not keen on his son’s sporting aspirations in the risky new world of cars. Sydney was soon an active member of local car and motorcycle clubs.

All the members of the family enjoyed motorcycle trips and days out in the family Ford, frequently to Sussex. This was where Sydney’s ‘Clubman’ and ‘Trials’ driving experiences began. Jack’s belt-driven Douglas motorcycle was handed down to Sydney and this gave him his first taste of fiddling with greasy mechanical devices that needed servicing and repairing. A Morgan three-wheeler that had been tweaked in various ways by the brothers was also handed down by Jack.

Arthur Allard soon accepted that his second son was not going to join the family building firm, but it was clearly a father’s duty to provide guidance and support. This was manifested when Arthur bought his way into a business and then encouraged the young Sydney as he turned it into a viable motor business. His son’s developing love of things wheeled and noisy was funded and controlled by an older and wiser business partner, Alf Brisco (spelled without an ‘e’, according to the Adlards Motor Company letterhead). Hard graft was required, but Sydney also relied on his father’s helping hand. The small garage that sowed the seed of Allardism was located in Keswick Road, Putney. By a strange coincidence, the trading name of the business purchased for Sydney was R. Adlard. This was soon rejigged as the trading entity Adlards Motors, and the unintended similarity of the owner and company name was to cause some later confusion. The Allard family eventually lived almost ‘over the shop’ in a block of flats with roof gardens and views over London that Arthur Allard had built on the site of the original Adlards premises, with its garage on the ground floor.

Sydney repaired, modified and sold cars from the Adlards garage under the tutelage of Mr Brisco. The new enterprise was a Limited Company and the named officials were Sydney, Alfred Brisco and, curiously, Sydney’s mother Cecilia. The Adlards Motor Company was officially inaugurated on 5 April 1930. Two important events that took place by 1934 were the appointment of Reginald ‘Reg’ Canham to the company and the award of a dealership franchise by the Ford Motor Company of England. The financial security and personal confidence that this brought enabled Sydney to undertake a flourishing amateur career away from the garage, where he could store his various mechanical projects and hope that his father did not ask too many questions. Not yet twenty-five, the essential construct of Sydney’s personality and direction was now set. His early interest in mechanical devices had been concentrated on motocycles. When he was twelve years old, for example, he was interested in Francis-Barnett motorcycles and the family still has a scrapbook full of cuttings about them.

The Streatham and District Motorcycle Club was also important on the local scene. Cars were also popular in this part of south London and Sydney was immersed in a world of emerging wheeled opportunity in a new age of growing mass motoring.

Bill Boddy later claimed that it was he who persuaded Sydney to form the Ford Enthusiasts Club in 1938. After the war he was a passenger when an Allard driven by Sydney turned over, but fortunately he was thrown clear. Boddy lived until he was 98 and was much loved by the Allard Owners Club.

Sydney was not an egotistical extrovert, but he was a confident speaker who enjoyed social gatherings and often gave talks to motor clubs and other groups in later years. His sister Mary, who served as Company Secretary for his ventures, recently told the Allard Owners Club that she thought Sydney was the one of the brothers who ‘tried to be in charge’, and that he ‘had a great deal of charm and people liked him, helped him’. Because of that he could ‘get around anybody. Even if people did not like him in business, they thought he was a damn good bloke! Everything came easy to him. Everyone rushed to help Sydney.’

Mary’s first husband was Eddie McDowell, who worked for Allards as purchasing manager. Three years after his untimely death she remarried Sydney’s brother in-law Alan May in 1959. Prior to that Mary had been closely involved in running Allards, including organizing Sydney’s vital trip to New York to set up the Allard Motor Company Inc., New York (USA).

Her nephew Darell described Mary as an outspoken character in his 2017 published tribute to her:

Mary clearly contributed to the...