This Snapshot starts with a bit of a mystery. The Saxon motor car was made in America, and most photos – even of UK registered cars – show left-hand drive. Was this car built with right-hand drive, or converted by the UK importer, L. C. Rawlence and Co. of 39 Sackville Street, London? Leonard Curtis Rawlence was indeed a serious player in the British motoring scene. He imported Saxons from America and Berliets from France, and was sole concessionaire until at least 1925 for the trucks and buses of another French company, Latil. Around the period 1903 to 1905, he was a director of J. E. Hutton Ltd, importers of Panhard and Mercedes and makers of the Hutton light car.
The Saxon Motor Car Company in Detroit, Michigan built light cars from 1913 to 1922. In 1917, 28,000 cars were made, making it the seventh largest car maker in the United States. The company was set up by Hugh Chalmers of Chalmers Motor Car Company to build a lower-priced volume car to complement the upmarket Chalmers car. The first Saxon was a 2-seat runabout with 2-speed transmission and a four-cylinder engine made by Ferro. 7,000 were made in the first year of production. The car in our Snapshot is almost certainly a four-cylinder – its capacity is recorded as 1,479cc.
From 1913 to 1914, electric lighting was an extra option, which became a standard fitting to the car in 1915 – although our 1916 example still appears to be fitted with acetylene lights. Saxon also built the Saxon Six from 1915, a five-passenger tourer with a Continental six-cylinder engine, at around twice the price of the four-cylinder machine.
In 1915, Harry W. Ford, formerly with Chalmers, bought out Hugh Chalmers’s interest and became president of a reorganised Saxon company. Early in 1915, Saxon moved production to the former Abbott factory, also in Detroit. By 1918 the company got into financial difficulties; in trying to expand further, it had bought large quantities of parts and was building a larger factory. The four-cylinder model was discontinued.
In 1919 C. A. Pfeffer, another former Chalmers manager, became president. The new factory, which Saxon could not pay for, was sold to General Motors. In 1920 a new model, the Saxon Duplex, powered by an overhead-valve, four-cylinder engine, joined the six-cylinder model.
By 1921 production had fallen to 2,100 cars. Saxon sold off its parts business to settle debts and used the proceeds to move the company to Ypsilanti, Michigan. But this was not enough; the last cars, probably made in 1922, were sold in 1923.
Image displayed with the kind permission of the Haynes Motor Museum.
A photo of this Grimsby-registration Saxon appeared in the 1955-published “Veterans of the Road” by Elizabeth Nagle (then secretary to the Veteran Car Club). It was described as a 1916 model having a 4-cylinder engine (11.9-h.p., 69mm bore and 102mm stroke), magneto ignition, 2-speed sliding gearbox and acetylene headlamps. In those days, it was also sporting a pair of non-standard carriage-lamp sidelights on the windscreen pillars.
When the Saxon’s specification was described in the December 1913 American Horseless Age magazine, the engine dimensions were 2.625 inches (67mm) by 4.0 inches (102mm) with an A.L.A.M./S.A.E. rating of 11-h.p. and the car to be left hand drive as had become American convention by then but, unusually for the time, with centre controls. An acetylene gas generator for the front lights was on the right-hand side. The car was priced at $395 (equal to £79) when launched and this was the model first imported to England mid-1914, although it was significantly improved in looks and had some mechanical improvements as early as August 1914.
The cars that arrived in England in July 1914 were probably left-hand drive but, exceptionally for a light car, had two doors and were priced at a reasonable £105 – a “hundred-guinea” car even with import tax. They had a notionally R.A.C. 11-h.p. rated engine mustering 14.7-h.p. at 2000-rpm. Two summer 1914 editorials stated that when it arrived here the engine had the original imperial dimensions, confirmed in at least three separate UK test reports as 67x102mm (1439cc), putting it above the common engine capacity of European light cars. The RAC’s 1914 light car trial limits were 1100cc to 1400cc and 1600lbs maximum car weight. The Saxon weighed only 10cwt (1120lbs), which gave it a good power to weight ratio, essential with just two speeds.
The car had its 2-speed and reverse sliding pinion gearbox on the back axle, had 28-inch Mott wire wheels with 3-inch tyres, Atwater-Kent distributor ignition by six dry cells, two screen pillar-mounted acetylene headlamps with a right-hand engine side panel-mounted gas generator, one rear oil light, horn, basic weather protection and tool-kit. They were only pictured here in July 1914 side-on, making steering position unclear, fitted with wire wheels but without running boards and valances, which were stated to be installed before sale.
Their advantage was those centre change-speed and brake levers, which would have made a change of wheel position easier, but no definitive information came to light about who made the first conversion, where and how quickly. Early American photographs of left-hand-drive chassis show no obstruction to the right of the engine to prevent easy conversion to RHD. With potentially big sales in Britain and its colonies in prospect, surely Saxon would have quickly engineered the conversion?
Unconfirmed but it seems so, as when L. C. Rawlence of 40 Sackville St., London first supplied editorial information, having taken up only a southern agency in autumn 1914, they made it clear that the gear lever being placed in the centre “is more easily operated by the left hand”, implying by then they already had RHD models. By December 1914, they had an improved version selling for the original 100-guineas – notably it got a three-hinge bonnet and bigger front-mounted acetylene lamps. An electric dynamotor/starter and lighting set with an Exide battery, which also powered the ignition, became a $70 option in the USA then and similar may have been offered in England before becoming standard for 1916-17, with equipment supplied by Remy.
The other large independent English Saxon agents were in Birmingham and Hull. Saxon, Detroit reported that both were telegraphing their orders direct to the factory by late 1914. If the Saxon’s EE1178 registration is original, high probability it was purchased from the Hull City Garage agency, run by Cornelius Parish, in Beverley-road. Loaned a Saxon by Parish in September 1915, a test-driver for the Hull Daily Mail, “Free Lance”, was pleased to note that the car had the wheel “where it should be, on the English side”, adding that this allowed him to seat his “fair passenger” courteously, first, via the nearside door and gain his own right-hand driving seat by using the offside door, without apology and without having to vault in.
An advert by Saxon Motors, 40, Sackville St., London, W. in the November 1915 edition of the Sphere magazine confirmed the car was right-hand drive, with a Bosch magneto ignition option for £5 extra. According to reports, American cars gained a gate-change three-speed gearbox, dynamo lighting and electric starting during 1915, which specification eventually in England cost £145. The bore was increased to 2.75-inch (c.69mm) for 1916 models, raising capacity to c.1526cc. and giving it a 12-h.p. N.A.C.C. rating. A right-hand-drive 11.9-h.p. Saxon was photographed in Virginia Waters in December 1915 and a photograph taken in January 1916 of one registered DJ369 (a St. Helens number) was also right-hand drive, had acetylene lamps but wooden artillery wheels. Standard wooden wheels featured in the Saxon entry in the January 1916 American Handbook of Automobiles, although English adverts still showed them with wire wheels and acetylene headlamps well into 1916.
Saxon had by then outlets all over Britain and Ireland. They were said to have become very popular, perhaps because they seem to have been imported in good numbers well into WW1, were sturdy, cheap despite imposition of up to 33% import tax and good value for money for those with authorisation to buy. A delivery van version was on sale in the USA late in 1914 and was on sale here in 1916-17. During 1917, there were very few adverts with new Saxon 4-cylinder light cars for sale indicating the model’s impending demise in Britain, although Parish in Hull still had the latest version with a three-speed gearbox in June.
Saxon’s main engine supplier was the Continental Motor Manufacturing Company, Detroit. Before the end of 1913, Saxon put in an order for 10,000 engines with Continental to be delivered from its Muskegon small-engine plant over the next twelve months. Continental was confident it could meet such large contracts but like many other American engine manufacturers may have bought in rough and part-fettled castings, even part constructed engines, from the Ferro Machine and Foundry Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Ferro was known from the early 1900s as an innovative marine motor builder, making one-to-three-cylinder models and by 1914, innovative “row-boat” outboard motors. They advertised in the Automobile Trade Directory from 1907 only as a supplier of marine engines but by 1912 were advertising that they contract-made complete automobile and motorcycle engines, as well as all kinds of cast and machined “gray-iron” automobile parts. By 1914, two-thirds of their output was automotive castings and they claimed they supplied Overland with twelve-hundred castings per day that year and similar totals to their other well-known customers.
In 1915, Ferro fully manufactured a very advanced 90-degree V-8 designed by the Brush Engineering Association for the Briscoe Car Company’s new car. It was one of the earliest with exhaust valves outside the vee. Ferro themselves had a design for a V-12 already in prototype in 1915 but Saxon still bought six-cylinder engines for its bigger new model direct from Continental. This Saxon Six was launched in February 1915 but only arrived in England in quantity via Hull Docks in 1919, by when it was their only new model advertised, still called a light car, in Chummy Roadster (£495) and 5-seater Touring (£550) versions. “Free Lance” lamented in the Hull Daily Mail in August 1919 that the 4-cylinder was no more but that another twenty-eight new Saxon Sixes had just arrived at Parish’s garage in Hull. In a final hurrah from October 1921, Parish had the last 1922-model Saxon-Duplexes advertised for sale in Britain, selling off his £750 “shop-soiled” demonstration car for a bargain £425 in February 1922.
Fair to observe that after its valiant but doomed attempt to match Henry Ford’s pricing, the Saxon Motor Co. did not have the best of business luck. After Chalmers sold-out and retired in 1916, Harry W. Ford took over the renamed Saxon Motor Corporation, which was building a new factory while forced to use at least four manufacturing sites to meet demand. In 1917, its original main factory burnt down, perhaps the cause of subsequent lower availability in Britain. Then Harry W. Ford died of pneumonia in New York in 1918, leaving it without a trusted leader and precipitating near financial collapse. Suggesting a wartime subsidy, on completion the new factory had to be leased to the government, which sold it on to General Motors. In 1919, new chief Pfeffer subsequently claimed to have revived Saxon’s finances under the up-market Saxon Duplex brand but he too left in 1921. Vice-president Harry L. Bill took over and was promised extra finance from a new shares issue, as he moved production from Detroit to the old Ace factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan but it never materialised and three creditors owed just $3400 forced it into receivership in December 1922. Five Saxon-Duplex models were listed in both January 1922 and January 1923 American Automobile Handbooks but only the former gave any prices…