Crossley touring car.
This photo was sent over by Mark, who is researching his family's history and scanning their early photographs. He enquired as to the make and model of car that his great-grandfather is sat in. I was fairly confident that the car shown was a Crossley tourer, and research has borne this out. The registration (?? 1436) is partially obscured, but maybe the car survives? The photo was taken in August 1921, showing the Crossley during a run out to Dinarth in North Wales.
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The Crossley 25/30 of 1919 - 1925.
I've not yet found a photo of an identical model, but a look at the Crossley Motors website shows a photo of a Crossley 25/30, fitted with "Manchester" 5 seat tourer coachwork, which looks very similar to that in the photo above. The main difference is that the Crossley in Mark's photo has a pair of spare knock-on wheels mounted in the offside running board. One or two other large Crossleys also feature this arrangement, so perhaps it was an option at the time? The hood arrangement of the 25/30 matches that shown above, along with the lighting, radiator, and the leather seating. The 25/30 was fitted with a 4.5 litre four cylinder engine, with magneto ignition and four speed transmission.
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Crossley cars were built in the Manchester area from 1904, with the first factory located in Gorton. A new factory was built in Stockport in 1915, the plan being to expand car production in this new facility. However with the Great War in full swing, the facility was used to produce military equipment. By the mid-1930s motorcar production was tailing off, the company now focusing on commercial vehicle and industrial engine manufacture.
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Recently I had a chat to a neighbour who is keen on local history, and he reminded me that the Crossley family used to live at an Abbey just a mile or so away from where I'm sat. Next to the road that runs by the entrance to the Abbey is an old tin building, nestling in the corner of a field. I'm told that the Crossleys used to store their private aircraft in this tin shed, and flew to Ringway aerodrome (now Manchester Airport) whenever they needed to visit the Manchester factories. If anyone has more information on the type of aeroplane the brothers flew, I'd be interested to hear from you. Equally, if you have more information on the Crossley shown in Mark's photo, by all means drop me a line.
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Another fine old photo of a pre-war Crossley, this time a chauffeur-driven saloon used by J.A. Pickthall & Sons in Cumbria, features on this page, in the motoring collectables section. A fine collection of vintage Crossley charabanc pictures can also be found in this vintage photo section of the site, as can a picture from 1913 of a 15hp Crossley tourer.
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Return to Old Car Photos Page No. 9.
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