A Bean 11.9hp touring car.
The credit for the following photograph of a vintage Bean belongs to Ian Shiner, he sent it over as part of his research into the car that is shown. The location is, I'm told, St. Leonards-on-Sea, in East Sussex.
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The company responsible for building the Bean car had its beginnings in engineering, as so often was the case with motor manufacturers in the vintage era. During the Great War they turned their skills to the production of armaments, but once the war had ended, a new use for the factory's extensive production capacity was required. Bean began manufacturing what had previously been the 11.9hp Perry car (a Perry 8hp can be found on this page), now badged as a Bean, the company having bought the tooling and rights to it in 1919. The car shown above is believed to be a circa 1922 11.9hp Bean. Production of different models continued throughout the 1920s, but by the end of the decade, reliability was becoming a real issue, with many cars being returned to the factory for rectification work. As a result, car production ceased in 1929, with the company going into liquidation a couple of years later. In 1933 the company would re-establish itself as Bean Industries, providing casting services to the motor industry. In this role the company saw much success, leading to a take-over by Standard-Triumph in 1956. For a full history of the company, I'd recommend taking a look at a page on the history website: link. The Bean Car Club also has a history page on its site: link.
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Thanks again to Ian for providing me with this photograph.
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An item of paperwork relating to an authorised supplier of Bean motor-cars in 1928, can be found on this page, here at OCC. An invoice for garage work undertaken to another Bean, this time in West Sussex in 1923, can be found here, on the Fields Garage page.
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Return to Page 21 in the motoring image archive, or visit the main index of vintage & classic photographs here.
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