Yorkshire Grit

[David Morris]

Hi All,

Let’s peel away the years and position yourself in the factory offices of Jowett Cars Ltd. one day in Autumn 1952. First, take away the benefit of hindsight. You don’t know what the future holds for the plucky little company around you.

With your own eyes, you can see that things don’t look too good. Javelin production has fallen away and the Service Department are struggling with customer’s cars being returned under warranty. Gearboxes mostly, with tales from Production where the lads don’t have time to get their hands dry from having them inside gearboxes day after day. Gears are having to be ‘selected’ to fit and there are rumours of bodges being adopted to get gearboxes fit to replace those in customer’s cars that are jumping out of gear or locking up on the road. A few broken crankshafts too, unfortunately.

You might be forgiven for thinking that the future for the company is bleak. The supply of completed Javelin bodies from Brigg’s seems to have dried up…just as well you think, as there are unfinished Javelin bodies stacked away all round the factory and tales of more in local disused aerodromes?

However, that just isn’t the real picture! In the midst of depression and an industry that was struggling, this little Yorkshire company just didn’t throw in the towel! They seemed energized by the problems and rose to really impressive levels of enthusiasm. There is a new Chief Engineer, Donald Bastow, just bursting with new engineering solutions. He is determined to get the Javelin engine sorted and is experimenting with Wills rings instead of conventional head gaskets, aluminium cuffs shrunk onto the liners, to stiffen them and rumours of a new design of crankshaft.

Over in Experimental, you have seen the first CD rolling chassis’s, with the first steel examples of the new saloon, pick-up and van, all looking very smart, when they are not plastered in mud from being thrashed around the 200 mile road runs, up and down the local hills.

The Jupiter, always assembled by the factory, is having a design make-over, with the latest rubber-bushed front suspension and even a boot to carry the overnight luggage!

The 1952 Motor Show has just been held and there were frantic efforts to produce a replacement for the Jupiter in time for the show. She was called the R4 and she looked smashing on the stand! They took thousands of orders! It was claimed she would do 100mph, and she did it later around the MIRA test track.

Even the management seemed infected with new ideas. There were plans to start sub-contract engineering production for aviation companies, just like had been achieved during the war. British designs for passenger planes was the Government’s new ‘white hope’ for the country, with plans to capitalize on the new jet engine age. The banks were being asked for more working capital and the company had invested heavily in new tooling for the CD range of design options. Brigg’s, the bodywork supply company over in Doncaster were still being hopeful of Jowett’s next order for bodies and were still a reasonably friendly Yorkshire company.

So, yes, things were a bit rocky, but there was bundles of enthusiasm and Yorkshire ‘grit’ on display. I don’t think many in the company foresaw what would happen in the following months of 1953.

Of course, what did happen was the takeover of the site, buildings and the whole workforce by International Harvester. Jowett Engineering was hived off to provide support for the customer base and I am sure development work continued with their relationship with Ferguson. ( Look in Coventry Motor Museum for an example of an OHC design of what seems to be a Javelin engine )

Jowett’s were, in my opinion, left short of working capital, coupled with some poor decisions in not moving fast enough to get the CD range into volume production. Brigg's didn't help much here , moving very slowly with the CD's. Australia was crying out for commercial vehicles and steel allocations at that time were geared to overseas sales. Sales of the Javelin had been critically dented by the reliability issues and the Jupiter must have been a loss-making project right from the outset, especially with the warranty claims in the USA. The agents over there, Angell Motors, couldn't understand why there were so many warranty issues in the USA. Perhaps the long distances with sustained high speed driving in the USA were raising crankshaft issues? The Bradford had probably carried the company through many years of steady sales but was by now seen as a legacy design. Jowett’s cupboard was bare…they just didn’t have anything to sell that people wanted to buy.

The R4 was a very courageous concept but it was right at the very early stages of fiberglass design. Just getting the raw castings off the jigs often took lots of muscle power. It would have taken just too long for Briggs, or even Jowett’s for that matter, to get steel R4 bodies into volume production.

Yes, a plucky, lively little company, with lots of ‘yes, we can’ get up and go, right to the end. Unfortunately, not one that could survive in the volume car market without vehicles to sell but one that perhaps should have recreated itself into a niche market, like Morgan, Aston Martin and Reliant.

Hope you enjoyed this natter and that I haven't made too many mistakes?

All the best and stay safe,

David

[David Morris]

Hi All,

I should add that in dreaming up this very short entry in 'Natter', to entertain during the Lock-Down, I have drawn considerably on the excellent The Complete Jowett History by Paul Clark and Edmund Nankivell, to whom I am indebted. This has been augmented by contributions from many members memories and from ex-Jowett employees. I remain in awe of the enthusiasm and resourcefulness shown by the company and their example of true Yorkshire Grit.

Take care,

David

[Keith Clements]

Thanks David.
Yes a good natter.
IMHO the issue lay with senior management not having a vision statement. Finance, marketing and engineering were all pulling in different directions.
Jowett needed to choose between commercial, saloon and sporting markets. Then finance and engineer projects accordingly. Although the CD range tried to combine all three markets, it would probably have been a master of none. Yes it might have succeeded with early capital injection to replace the Bradford to get some needed revenue, but would the saloon and sports models been a commercial success? I doubt it.
Production costs were always an issue at Jowetts. The rotating assembly line was a step in the right direction. Outsourcing the body manufacture may not have been a good idea. But in-housing the gearbox manufacture was definitely not.
Should Jowetts have continued making their own engines? Look what happened to other manufacturers in the 'The British car industry – companies & marques' chart at the end of this page.
Consider if the company had capital like the German car industry had after the war. Consider if management used a Japanese way of doing things. Consider if they had not gained an unreliability reputation. Even then it is hard to see them surviving through the 1960's as a car manufacture. They would have struggled as a Morgan or TVR as there was not a real market then. But could they have survived as an engine manufacturer or commercial vehicle constructor/tailor? My bet is on the latter as being the most likely with possible division of the company into a supplier to other industries of things like specialist engine components. International Harvester Metro Van

[PJGD]

I am inclined to think that Jowett did not think big enough when they commissioned the Javelin, and later got talked into producing the Jupiter. They started off with a focus on a 1.2 L engine for the domestic market and 1.5L for export. Clearly 1.2 L would have been underpowered, and I suspect that JCL management may have felt that they missed a trick when a smaller, younger company Swallow Sidecars, renamed Jaguar after the war came out in 1949 with a 3.4 L DOHC 6-cylinder engine that was performance oriented, and a likely export hit for the post-war Export-or-Die era.

[Keith Clements]

It might be a cultural trait of Yorkshiremen to be careful with cash. The little engine with the big pull heritage may have been too strong a mantra. My long discussions with Gerald Palmer about the Javelin suggested that he was constrained by the brief given to him. When I gave a presentation about Gerald at the Gaydon Motor Museum I had discussions with some of his colleagues at Morris. They said his grasp of production engineering was lacking.
So maybe the reason for the 'failure' of the Jowett was high production (and rectification) cost. This would not just be down to Gerald but also to the 'watch maker' in charge of production. In essence, I do not think Jowetts had the people and the facilities to produce a volume production vehicle.
But the comparison with Swallow and Jaguar is certainly worth investigation to see how they were able to prosper and grow. What did Swallow do during the war ? Did this help their development? How and why was the engine developed? Did it have funding from some source other than vehicle sales? We need to look at the decisions the management made in the immediate post war period. The Jaguar slogan was “Grace, Space, Pace”. So they had a vision statement and a single objective rather than the diverse approach of Jowetts. They were also a public company rather than being owned by property developer Charles Clore in 1945 or in 1947 the bankers Lazard Brothers.

Having read Wikipedia it reminded me that Gerald said that Jowetts would not spend any money on development of his engine. This maybe contributed to his leaving Jowetts. Look at the way the 1949 Jaguar engine had developed from the 1944 version and then look at how the Jowett engine developed over the same period.

[PJGD]

In Heynes, Hassan and Baily, Jaguar had three "engine" design guys, Jowett did not have any really. Gerald had never designed an engine before [that I know of], and I don't know how much involvement the prewar Chief designer was involved with the Javelin. The prewar four cylinder 10 HP engine had some nice features which regrettably did not get transferred into the Javelin engine, specifically the two high-mounted camshafts, one for each bank which would have resulted in a more capable valve train. The two main bearing crankshaft was interesting too in that cylinders two and three shared a common crank pin; for the Javelin, this would have needed to be a four main bearing shaft - still one bearing less than a typical 4-cylinder engine today.

Jowett 10 HP engine 1935.jpg