The Hands car gives some insight into the complex interweaving of suppliers and small car manufacturers in Birmingham in the inter-war years. George Hands was the originator of the Calthorpe light car. In 1922 he decided to build a car under his own name, using part of the Calthorpe motorcycle factory to build them. Calthorpe made its own engines, but the Hands used several bought-in components. Firstly, Hands sourced his engines from W. H. Dorman & Co. of Stafford. One source suggests that Dorman made suitable four-cylinder side-valve engines in several sizes, 9.5hp (1196cc), 10.5hp (1498cc) and 10/20hp (1246cc). Theoretically, therefore, the car in our Snapshot should have the largest engine – but the literature in two auction catalogues (the car was offered for sale in 2009 and 2024) state that it has a 9.8hp 1,060cc engine. That is not even a known catalogued Dorman engine…
The other bought-in element was the three-speed gearbox, manufactured by E. G. Wrigley and Co, a Birmingham-based maker of transmission components for several car manufacturers. That company started in 1897 making small tools and might be considered rather obscure – but in 1918 Cecil Kimber, later the driving force behind MG, joined the company. Kimber made a large personal investment in Wrigley and while there, styled the radiator for the Angus-Sanderson line of cars. Those cars did not sell well, and Kimber lost his investment and left Wrigley. In 1924 the Wrigley factory premises were taken over by William Morris and became Morris Commercial Cars.
The Hands car was based on a ladder-frame chassis equipped with all-round quarter-elliptic leaf-sprung suspension and rear-wheel brakes. It was praised by The Autocar for its “surprisingly smooth engine” and “decidedly comfortable springing”, but it was arguably too expensive to succeed. Despite both Hands entries for the 1923 London-to-Edinburgh Trial receiving Gold Medals, the marque disappeared in 1924 after just 150 or so cars had been made.
However, Hands did in that final year announce a 1,991cc 14/45hp 6-cylinder car with a shaft-driven single-ohc engine. Though the gearbox came from Moss it seems the engine was his own, but very few were made, and at the end of the year he returned to Calthorpe. He took the six-cylinder design with him, and it was offered from 1925 as the Calthorpe Six Type C. Very few were made, possibly only one.
Image displayed with the kind permission of the Haynes Motor Museum.
Motoring correspondents’ press reports and sales adverts, contemporary with the production of George William Hands cars, fill in a lot of detail about them and his company. They confirm that he installed more than one size and make of bought-in engine and that the 1922, 10/20 Hands two or four seat tourer was launched with a motor built in-house.
Hands resigned from the Calthorpe Investment Co. late in 1920 and after press trumpeting in September 1921 that he was about to launch a “hot stuff £300 car off his own bat”, his first light car was advertised from October 1921 priced as promoted but with just a “standardised” 9.8/10-h.p. side-valve Dorman engine. It was a two-seater with double-dickey seat, head and screen, well-specified with Rotax electric starting/lighting, horn, spare wheel and tools. It was jointly advertised with his £36 lightweight Calthorpe-brand motorcycle, both made in his Lion Works, Barn Street, Birmingham where Hands had continued to make Minstrel/Rea pedal-cycles and Calthorpe motorcycles independently of Calthorpe’s 1908-built Bordesley Green, Birmingham car factory. He would declare he had a £1M turnover in his cars and motorcycles by 1923.
By September 1922, Hands’ adverts were offering a choice of Dorman or Coventry-Simplex engines, listing both a Hands 9.8-h.p. Dorman (£285) and a Hands 11-h.p. Coventry-Simplex (£300). The latter’s engine was probably only fitted in the Coupe version, which was individually advertised with an 11/22-h.p. engine. A years-later second-hand advert offered a 2-seater Hands with an unlikely but possible, 10-h.p. Coventry-Simplex rather than an 11/22-h.p.
The appearance of the new 10/20 Hands car was reported in October 1922 by well-known motoring writer J. Owen, who was loaned one for a short test drive as it was being returned to London for the White City Show (Stand 64), from a 1200-mile factory trial-run to Devon. Owen reported that the original 9.8/10-h.p., 1495cc Dorman had been replaced by a made-in-house, 10/20-h.p., 1247cc side-valve engine with a 63mm bore and 100mm stroke. Its flywheel was turned from a steel stamping, not a casting, driving via a fabric cone clutch. It had a Remy distributor driven by the adjustable camshaft chain, a Claudel-Hobson carburettor, Serck radiator and a Rotax starter and lighting set. Both 3-speed gearbox and back axle came from Wrigley and it had five Michelin steel-disc wheels. This new 1922-23, 10/20-h.p. Hands model sported a new wider, longer body and a generally higher-specification, including a Smiths’ clock. The 10/20-style body was advertised in November 1922 as a 2-seater (£260) and a 4-seater (£280), alongside the Coupe (£330) which, where defined, was always advertised as 11/22-h.p. Two Deluxe models were soon added.
Hands cars were not considered too expensive at the time and prices did come down for 1923-24 due to competitive marketing. The equivalent Calthorpe cars were priced about the same in 1922-24.
With one of his other business hats on, Hands owned the Palace Hotel in Torquay and in April 1923, he donated a 10/20 Ball’s-bodied two-seater Hands car to Torquay United Football Club, of which he was a director, to raffle for 2/6 per ticket – the club made £962 7s 6d, more than three times the car’s value. It was won by Mrs. Bertha Harding of Torwood-street and Hands said he would personally deliver it.
Hands six-cylinder cars were produced, exhibited and on sale for £395 here, in Australia too, before the bankrupt Calthorpe Investment Company’s receiver tempted George Hands back to try to rescue his old car company at Bordesley Green, mid-1924. He appears to have taken the 10/20, bored 2mms to give 1327cc, as well as the advanced six’ engine designs with him but despite his efforts Calthorpe Cars could not be saved beyond 1925. George Hands being a successful hotelier, football club director, property developer and race-horse owner (including one called Calthorpe, of course) was not tempted back into manufacturing under his own name after that.
As to Dorman’s engines, after the company had been recapitalised in 1919, largely to fund expansion of car engine manufacture, its range was advertised with outputs from 8-h.p. to 60-h.p. That year they supplied their smallest, a 1914-designed water-cooled 1094cc 4-cylinder with a bore of 64mm and stroke 85mm, to at least two light car manufacturers (Graham-White and Castle). Between 1919 and 1922, no contemporary newspaper record shows they made a 10/20-h.p. 1246cc. engine but during this period dedicated their factory to “the mass production of standardised and interchangeable” post-1918-only motor designs.
Continuing a 1919 sales campaign themed “The heart of a car is its engine”, they listed all their current standardised engines in an April 1921 advert. Their smallest petrol engine size then was the new, highly-praised 9.8/10-h.p. 4-M.V., with its 69mm bore and 100mm stroke giving 1495cc. It was hardly a state-of -the-art design, even with enclosed side-valves and a detachable head, but it retailed for just £47 and was the one fitted in the first Hands.
Dorman’s next size up was their highly advanced, mostly aluminium, exposed push-rod, overhead-valve 12-h.p. 4-K.N.O. with a 69mm cast-iron wet-liner bore and a 120mm stroke, making it 1795cc. Originally designed in 1919, the K.N.O. had been enlarged from just 63mm x 120mm, only 1496cc., at which size it had been fitted into the Hampton car between May and November 1919. Hampton, Vulcan, Varley-Woods and other sportier constructors were fitting the larger version in their 1920 cars. Next in size was the side-valve 15.9/16-h.p. 4-M.R., its 80mm x 130mm giving it 2614cc. They listed a further three capable of running on petrol or paraffin and suitable for larger cars and commercials: 25-h.p. J.U., 32-h.p. J.J. and 40-h.p. J.O. There was also a purely commercial 72-h.p. engine.
For comparison, the widely used 1919-22 fixed-head 10-h.p. Coventry-Simplex had 66mm bore and 109.5mm stroke for 1498cc., just under the “official” light car limit. Specified to order, it was already credited with producing 20-h.p. and seems likely became the 11/22-h.p. engine installed in the Hands Coupe. With a different cam and valves, it could produce double the official RAC output on the brake. Progressing from its old-fashioned layout, in 1922 they brought out a new overhead-valve 8.9-h.p. engine with a 60mm bore and 95mm stroke for 1074cc., one of the newer, smaller “off the shelf” engines.
Reference Wrigley, Kimber and Angus-Sanderson: the gearbox and axle maker was one of the companies drawn into the consortium by the Sanderson brothers post-WWI, to build Angus-Sanderson cars from standardised parts that included Tylor engines but not Dorman’s. It was the failure of Angus-Sanderson to take the components that Wrigley had budgeted to sell them that drove the latter into bankruptcy in 1923. The demise of Wrigley seems strange, given that from 1919 there had been plenty of independent capacity to make engines, many used by successful brands like Morris, despite national strikes by sand-casters and some raw material shortages. Whereas, shortages of gearboxes and driven axles was reported to have restricted the output of many smaller constructors.