Greetings, fellow CCurbivores, and welcome to this third salvo of British Deadly Sins. The pickings are rich, in this land of entrepreneurial inventiveness and eccentricity, mixed with rigid conservatism and class conflict. Over the next three days, we will focus on three rather different automakers: the aristocratic Invicta, the middle-class Standard and the blue-collar Reliant. So let’s kick things off at the top of the heap and examine the most modern post-war luxury car you’ve never heard of, the Invicta Black Prince.
Invicta was the third automobile marque founded by Noel Macklin. Born in Australia in 1886, Macklin moved to England in 1891 and became part of the privileged class at Eton and by 1901 he had already developed a taste for driving his father’s Panhard & Levassor around South Kensington. In 1911, he bought an 18-litre Fiat SB4 racer and lost his license very soon after that. After the First World War, Macklin began to focus his energy into making the type of transport he craved – fast and exclusive. His base was a small workshop in Cobham, Surrey. His first car marque was Eric-Campbell, created in 1919 but built at the Handley-Paige works. Soon, Macklin abandoned the venture and created the Silver Hawk marque: twelve cars were more or less built in his garage when he threw in the towel in 1921. Macklin needed a backer, which he found in sugar baron heir Oliver Lyle, to develop a much more ambitious car. In 1925, the Invicta was born.
The initial Invicta chassis was a carefully-crafted and well balanced one, with a 2.5 litre straight-6 made by Meadows. The price was rather high and competition in the mid-‘20s was fierce, but Invictas soon a reputation for being very quick, especially once the engine was bumped up to 3 litres in 1926. Invicta’s most impressive car, the 4.5 litre, arrived in 1928 and was an immediate success.
1931 Invicta 4.5 litre S chassis with 115 hp (later 140) Meadows engine
The 4.5 litre became one of the hottest British cars of the early ‘30s – particularly in its specially-tuned 140 hp “S” short-wheelbase form, which was capable of well over 100 mph. Rakish sportscars were Invicta’s stock in trade, but not a few 4.5 litre cars were ordered with a closed body.
Great as their cars were, Invicta felt the impact of the Wall Street Crash and the Depression all too severely. Macklin was keen on making a more affordable car, but for that he needed a more affordable engine than the ones Henry Meadows was selling. All Invictas had had Meadows engines up to now, and those cost a pretty pre-decimal penny.
Invicta did try to field smaller model, the 12/45. It had a 1.5 litre 6-cyl. Blackburne engine that soon appeared in the Frazer-Nashes of the period, too. But this was not really a solution to the original problem. Invicta had perhaps gone too small. The production methods were identical to the 4.5 litre cars, so the 1.5 litre cars were also way too expensive for their displacement class – it seems only around 60 were made. The hunt for a more appropriate engine continued…
Macklin found what he was looking for in Hudson’s Essex-Terraplane, the most sporting series-made American car of the ‘30s. But that meant a completely new car. So in early 1933, Macklin sold off Invicta and created his fourth marque, in collaboration with famous racing engineer Reid Railton, called Railton. The chassis was designed by Macklin and various potent Hudson sixes and eights were used – the AC Cobra was pretty much born. Was it such an original idea? Considering that the births of fellow Anglo-American hybrids Jensen and Brough Superior also took place around 1933, perhaps not.
Railton was quite a successful little firm, but as another war drew near, Noel Macklin reverted to another passion of his: power boats. In 1939, he sold Railton to Hudson and started work on a brand new generation of successful series-produced boats called the Fairmile, 800 of which were produced for the Royal Navy. For their part, Hudson were kind of stuck with Railton’s old stock for the duration of the war, after which exchange rates made production unviable.
1933 Invicta 4.5 Litre S roadster
The same could be said of Invicta. When Macklin sold it off in 1933, the new owners soon found that chassis production was no longer economically feasible. Dates are a little vague as to when production actually stopped, but sales were definitely extinguished by 1938. Only about 600 of the Invicta 4.5 litre chassis made (including fewer than 100 “S” types), but that was enough to keep the fan base alert.
The Meadows connection also ensured that engine and transmission parts were readily available even if Invictas were no longer being made, as the 4.5 litre also found its way under the bonnet of the contemporary Lagonda M45 (above), as well as powerboats and Vickers light tanks.
During the war, a group of investors managed to buy back the Invicta trademark and started work on a completely new car for the post-war era. There was a lot of uncertainty about the future, but some people were determined that Invicta would be part of it. Ads started appearing in 1945 to announce the coming of the new car, which was slated for mid-1946.
And so, as advertised, Invicta was reborn, prominently featuring the knight in armour emblem, which the ‘20s cars had used. The new Invicta went a little further by being called “Black Prince,” giving the little medieval warrior on the radiator an identity. The historic Black Prince was Edward (1330-1376), son of Edward III and heir to the throne, who led the English armies in the Hundred Years War and died before acceding to the throne. It was a bizarrely dark and ominous name for a mid-20th century automobile, though not without some precedent: a 7HP Jowett saloon from the late ‘20s also bore the Black Prince name, as did a series of prototype Churchill tanks (designed by Vauxhall) made in 1944-45. Coincidentally, said tank was slated to use a Rolls-Royce Meteor V12, built by none other than Henry Meadows…
Pre-war Invictas had been a well-made sports saloons and convertibles, but they were not particularly innovative – after all, the chassis were ‘20s technology. The new car would change all that rather dramatically. But at least as far as the engine was concerned, it was in the marque’s tradition: designed during the war by W. O. Bentley, but rejected by its potential client (Armstrong Siddeley), the Black Prince’s 3-litre straight-6 was built by Meadows, just as before. This engine was no pre-war relic, however. It was, at 127hp (gross, probably, though some sources claim only 120hp), relatively powerful for its size and featured a lot of cutting-edge technology: DOHC, all-alloy, twin ignition, triple SU carbs – Alfa and Talbot had better watch out!
The modernity of the power plant was mirrored by most of the car’s other technical attributes. All-round independent suspension with sliding pillars and torsion bars; four built-in electrically operated hydraulic jacks; floor and seats on a separate subframe with silentblocs to increase comfort; all-hydraulic Girling brakes (in-board at the rear); 24-volt electrics; a complicated heater and all the bells, whistles and radio sets one might wish for in 1946. But the piece de resistance was the Brockhouse Hydro-Kinetic Turbo-Transmitter.
Now, I’m going to have to admit my severe limitations when it comes to transmissions in general and automatic ones in particular. So I’ll just transcribe the words that Invicta themselves used to describe this Brockhouse thing: “Turbo torque converter fitted to the rear end of the crankshaft giving infinitely variable gear. Epicyclic reverse gear brought into operation by solenoid controlled by switch on the dash. Divided propeller shaft connected to hypoid axle.” In another brochure, Invicta claim their transmission “contains no gearing, not a single moving part, but merely transmits engine power by means of a centrifugal pump to a turbine.” Is it me, or does it sound like they had a CVT back in 1946? Move switch to forward, infinite gear forward. Move switch to reverse, infinite reverse. Just like with the early DAF Variomatics (and the Cotal electro-magnetic 4-speed gearbox seen on many cars of the ‘30s-‘50s), you can theoretically drive the Invicta at its top speed of 107 mph in reverse. [Edit: according to CC Editor Paul Niedermeyer, the Brockhouse is actually a straight up torque converter, kind of like the Dynaflow, but without a low range.]
The Black Prince needed a body commensurate with its chassis’ lofty ambitions. The first saloon, built by Charlesworth in 1946, definitely cast the car’s styling in the streamlined category. None of the contemporary razor edge design was to be found: the front of the car was kept fairly traditional-looking, as befits an English high-class saloon, but the fastback rear seemed to have come straight off a Pierce-Arrow.
The other obligatory body style was the two-door drop-head coupé. It was featured prominently in the 1947 brochures that Invicta published, and looked every bit as nice as any Bentley or Rolls ever devised at the time. The body was made by Airflow Streamlines, a Northampton firm more specialized in trucks than cars, but whose cheaper wares were sought in an effort to keep the final price within reason. Interestingly, this body was also used on a least one of the few post-war Railtons. Though he had died in 1946 and had no involvement in either Railton or Invicta since before the war, Noel Macklin’s two creations still shared a certain kinship, including a very steep price.
And therein lies the Deadliness of the Sin. Once heavily bodied and taxed (in 1947, Purchase Tax was doubled for cars worth over £1000), the 3-litre Invicta cost in the neighbourhood of £4000 – the territory of Bentley, Rolls-Royce and Daimler. This was very tough competition. These marques had impeccable credentials, a loyal following and truly massive engines. They could charge upwards of £4000 (custom body and Purchase Tax included) for their cars because of the quality of their engineering and fabrication. It seems it was possible to get a new Railton Eight or even a V12 Lagonda circa 1946-48, but these were virtually one-offs.
Chassis prices do not include 66% Purchase Tax, which was only added to bodied cars.
The new Jensen was a dangerous potential rival, being in the same high-displacement high-luxury class and quite a bit cheaper. The PW’s Meadows straight-8 failed to work properly, so pre-war Nash engines were used initially, before switching to the 4-litre Austin six. It bombed anyway: only 20 made in five years. Cheaper alternatives abounded: the VandenPlas-bodied Princess A120, soon to receive an even larger engine, was only let down by its Austin badge. Jaguars still used Standard blocs and pre-war underpinnings, but they were already incredible value. And below the £1000 mark, quite a bit less refined, there was the 3.9 litre Ford V8 Pilot and the 4.1 litre Humber Super Snipe…
It turns out the most advanced car in the world had a few fatal weak points. It was too expensive to build, buy and run, for one thing. For another, at just under two tonnes, it was a bit too heavy for a 3-litre: acceleration was not as effortless as most of the competition, even though the car’s top speed was decent enough. But the worst thing was that the Blockhaus Hydro-Pneumatic Turbo-Vibrator Westinghouse Tele-Kinetic Radio-Transmitter Brockhouse Hydro-Kinetic Turbo-Transmitter was – shock horror! – a bit on the fragile side. The inverser tended to get stuck in forward gear, and it was possible for the transmission to effectively self-destruct if handled improperly.
Were the Black Prince’s potential clientele scared off by the car’s ambitious technical features, its high price, its reputation for fragility or is somewhat sedate performance? It’s hard to tell. The main problem was that there was no real need for anything so complicated. Not in the austere context of late ‘40s Britain, anyway. It’s safe to assume the cars were made and sold at a loss. With sales remaining in the single digits, it was only a matter of time before production stopped in late 1949. Only 16 Black Prince chassis had been completed, but some were apparently only sold and bodied after liquidation.
Source: Wikicommons
The Curse of the Black Prince had struck again. The remains of Invicta became part of AFN, a.k.a Frazer-Nash, in mid-1950. The Black Prince had failed to conquer the hearts of England and died before its time. Perhaps that name was prescient, after all. Incredibly, some of these amazing machines have survived…
For their part, Hudson quietly ended the Railton experiment around 1950 as well. It was only a year after having displayed a new prototype (above) at Earl’s Court, complete with a staggering £4200 price tag and, most fittingly, the same Airflow-Streamlines convertible body as the Black Prince. Only two were made. It’s unclear how else that could have gone, but equally unclear how much Hudson lost financially in the whole affair.
True to its name, Invicta was not yet cold that some were aching to take up the brand. Perhaps inevitably, a new Invicta sports car was finally unveiled in 2003 by a man called Michael Bristow. The Invicta S1 had a Ford Mustang SVT V8, which provided more power than class, unlike the rest of the car, which was entirely hand-made. Prices went north of £150,000 quite quickly with the options list – prohibitively high for an Anglo-American hybrid, but then Bristow’s stated goal was exclusivity: ”We aim to be here indefinitely—and make a profit from building 20 cars a year,” he said at the time. Alas, the 2008 Financial Crisis and rising costs were too much to bear for this fragile re-birth to take hold. The S1 experiment was wound up in 2012.
With a marque like Invicta, one is almost tempted to see most cars as Deadly Sins. The 1.5 litre that cost way too much. The overly complex and mysteriously-named Black Prince that also cost way too much. The bespoke Ford-engined Naughties sports car that cost so much that it was part of the plan all along. They all killed Invicta multiple times. I think there’s an overarching theme here, but I just can’t quite put my finger on it.
But for my money, the star Sin is the Black Prince. It was absolute stark-raving madness to conceive of such a car in 1946. Not dissimilar to the contemporary vicissitudes of Tucker, Isotta-Fraschini or Delahaye, the Invicta Black Prince was a brilliant car on paper, beset by grave technical, production planning and sales-related issues that were fatal to their maker. Still, what bad-ass name.
See you tomorrow, as we explore the marvelously plain world of Standard Cars. TTFN.
* * *
European Deadly Sins series
French DS 1 (Hotchkiss, Panhard, Citroën) — French DS 2 (Bugatti, Facel-Vega, Monica)
French DS 3 (Berliet, Salmson, Delahaye)
British DS 1 (Jowett, Armstrong Siddeley, Daimler) — British DS 2 (Alvis, Lagonda, Gordon-Keeble)
German DS 1 (BMW, Borgward, Glas) — German DS 2 (Neckar, DKW, NSU)
Italian DS 1 (Autobianchi, Iso, Lancia) — Other DS1 (Minerva-Impéria, Monteverdi, DAF)
Would you believe there’s one for sale in Australia right now? Fully restored DHC, stated to be the only DHC left. Fitted with a normal automatic now, (or perhaps that should read, a working one), but engine is restored original. Top down, that body’s a really sweet version of the English-toff peasant-crusher style. Nice. (If one is the toff, natch).
The over-arching theme could be that all the previous models tried to kill Invicta, but it took a Black Prince in the night of post-war devastation to succeed.
Great stuff, standard to your lofty usual ofcourse, T-87.
Every time some “stately” British car like a DS420 limo or Armstrong Siddeley crops up, the Americans will complain that it’s not as sleek as the same year Chevy or whatever.
Thanks for coming up with such a succinct nickname. “My dearest Hank/Earl/Junior/Bubba, you’re mistaking it for a sedan/hardtop/brougham. This is in fact a ‘peasant-crusher'”.
+ 1 on “peasant-crusher”! I’m nicking that one, Justy…
Hi I am currently in the process of restoration the only Invicta black prince 4 door sedan, the car is all most finished, only a person that has worked on one of these cars can tell how much advance they are. Is a privilege to own one and work on it.
Before I came to appreciate the pre-war body, the low-chassis 4.5 S always struck me as a most appealing shape whenever I caught sight of it in the British classic mags. Something so natural about its stance, and so crisp about its line.
These T87 pieces remind me of the Marvel Universe, it’s as if he has created a whole intricately-woven alternate automotive history. Better still, though, it’s all true.
” it’s as if he has created a whole intricately-woven alternate automotive history. Better still, though, it’s all true.”
You have nailed it, Don! If CC issued comic books, this series would be a best seller.
Thank you kindly, Don & JPC — more marvels to come, hopefully soon…
wow! who knew such things existed?
“contains no gearing, not a single moving part, but merely transmits engine power by means of a centrifugal pump to a turbine.”
the whole fluid coupled transmission thing is a head-scratcher to me. i assume that they allowed earlier designs to work with fewer gears than modern fuel efficient designs.
“Not a single moving part” … just a pump, turbine and who knows what else. I guess British “Truth in Advertising” regs we’re pretty weak.
It’s just a torque converter, which was seen in the immediate post-war era as a way to eliminate the standard transmission. Torque converters can have a quite wide range of effective gear ratios; this one had from 4 to 1, which is essentially the same as the range covered by a manual transmission
Torque converters (without any additional gears) were used extensively on buses, some trains, tanks, and other heavy equipment. Keep in mind that transmissions were mostly still balky affairs with limited (or no) synchronization.
This is what the original Dynaflow and Powerglide had, except they also had a manually selectable Low gear for steep hills.
The original idea with TC was that they would eliminate/replace gearboxes entirely. Eventually automatic-shifted Low gears were added for better take-off, and then eventually an intermediate gear. That allowed the TC to need a less-wide range of effective multiplication, which made it somewhat more efficient.
But why such a device would be added to what was clearly a sporting car such as this one is another question.
“But why such a device would be added to what was clearly a sporting car such as this one is another question.”
And why it would be added as the *only* choice with no traditional 4 speed in the mix is an even better one.
I’ll put my guess on it being ‘modern’ or ‘the transmission of the future’ or something of the kind. No doubt there were dreamers in the 1940’s that figured that doing away with the clutch and manual transmission was pretty much inevitable.
In a way, it looks like those dreamers were right. Unfortunately, they were about 70-80 years ahead of themselves.
It’s not as though there weren’t any viable, proven alternatives in Forties Britain. I can see Daimler balking at selling their Fluid Flywheel setup to such an ambitious potential competitor, but there was still the upmarket and sporting cachet of the Wilson preselector.
I wonder how much the Brockhouse cost to tool up, given that this was the only car to use it? And how much it added to the selling price?
Brockhouse (which still exists) also made (makes!) torque converters for nonautomotive applications, so I assume it was an adaptation rather than a wholly bespoke item so far as tooling was concerned.
There were some cumbersome patent licensing issues with the Fluid Flywheel, which in any case was just a clutch, not a transmission. (It didn’t have a stator and could not multiply torque.)
Dynaflow and Powerglide also had a manufacturer with the resources to develop them properly.
FWIU the surviving Black Princes all have some sort of replacement transmission since every component of the Brockhouse is totally irreplaceable. It sounds like an early PG (or a later one set up to start in 2nd unless directed otherwise) would offer the nearest equivalent to the original driving experience.
So, if the Brockhouse is basically like a Dynaflow/Powerglide, can you also (theoretically) reach a Buick or Chevy’s top speed going backwards too?
No, because reverse gear on them was the same as Low gear, or 1.76:1 in the case of the PG. But that still allowed one to go up to 70 or more in reverse, depending on the axle ratio and engine. A 427 Corvette with PG could hit 100mph in Low or Reverse. Not too shabby.
I don’t have a lot of technical information on the Brockhouse unit, but judging by its stall ratio, its torque converter was only broadly like that of Dynaflow and Powerglide, which sacrificed multiplication for reduced slippage. (Given how notoriously both of them slipped and how much that cost in fuel consumption, this is amusing, but true.) They had stall ratios of 2.25:1, compared to the Brockhouse unit’s 4:1.
Black Prince? More like Monty Python’s Black Knight, bleeding profusely but shouting “It’s only a flesh wound!” It’s amazing that anyone in immediate post-war Britain thought this was a good idea.
I assume this was the same Meadows that made the Jowett Javelin transmission until Jowett’s disastrous attempt to build transmissions in-house?
Correct.
Highly successful gearbox and motor manufacturer, founded in 1919. T.E Lawrence “of Arabia” was one of the firm’s consultants in the 20s/30s, which is how Meadows got involved with military designs. Henry Meadows died in 1937, but the company continued on, becoming a vital supplier for the war effort. Meadows did attempt to design and sell their own car, the 1957-61 Frisky microcar. The company ended up being bought by Jaguar and was disbanded when BL formed in 1968.
Holy &@%# has there ever been a better car name than ‘Invicta Black Prince?’
My personal favourite is “Humber Super Snipe”. Not just a Snipe, a SUPER Snipe. 🙂
Reading the transmission description gives me the feeling that it’s just a torque converter, with little else. Makes a bit more sense than the Black Prince trying to shift gears manually while wearing a suit of armour.
When it was first introduced, after the war, the Super Snipe was a bigger-engined version of the regular Humber Snipe.
I agree that “Invicta Black Prince” is one of the great names of motor-dom. I am amazed that Invicta has never been picked up since Buick let it go fallow in the early 1960s.
Just wow – I had never heard of these before, but what a story! That transmission is indeed the most fascinating aspect. Take a car that is too expensive (and underpowered compared with everything else in its price range) then give it a pure torque converter to transmit way too little of that power to the wheels, and in a woefully non-responsive manner. I cannot decide if the concept is completely un-British engineering or if it is British engineering in its purest form.
Admitting the Black Prince was ambitious, could it have just about worked at it featured a normal gearbox?
What surprises me about the British motor industry is that they had a post-war export or die mentality, yet while being understandably reluctant to directly take on US marques in North America, few if any British carmakers looked at capitalizing on the US’s post-war love for the 90-degree V8 by developing their own.
The only British marques that comes to mind would be the pre-war Riley 8/90 (and Autovia) as well as a theoretical 4.9 Riley V8 via a pair of 2443cc Riley Big Four engines, which would have potentially been competitive against the post-war Cadillac and Oldsmobile V8 engines until the mid/late-1950s.
I think the American V8-mania was far less perceptible in the late ’40s than it was a decade later. Cadillac and Oldsmobile (as well as Ford/Mercury, of course) were in the V8 way in the immediate postwar years, but that hardly made it crystal clear that V8s were the way to go. Lincoln still fielded a V12, and think of all the straight-8s still in production back then: Buick, Hudson, Nash, Packard, Pontiac…
Mercedes certainly didn’t bother with V8s until the mid-’60s, and Jaguars sold pretty well with a straight-6.
Don’t forget, the “export or die” mentality wasn’t a choice.The government would only let you buy steel if your product was being exported. John Cooper went around buying old air-raid shelters to get steel to build his racing cars.
The Riley Big Four was heavy (~600) lb and long in the tooth. See the 4th paragraph of this article:
https://ateupwithmotor.com/model-histories/austin-healey-100-100-6-3000/
Thanks for the thorough explanation of the Invicta, interesting reading and very informative. For anyone who would like to call himself an Invicta owner, there is currently a very handsome 1949 saloon in Templeton, CA offered on eBay. Best have deep pockets to deal with scarcity of spaces, as the English would say.
As is my usual while reading these excellent series, I’m both reading the main narrative and picking up as many little details as I can that thread through motor history. And this time, I hit a doozy: Brockhouse.
I’m guessing its the same company, although I can’t document it, but we’re also talking about the creator of the Welbike, the 98cc British paratroopers bike that was sold postwar as a mini motorcycle. In England it was the Corgi. In America it was sold as the Indian Papoose during Springfield Indian’s disastrous final half-decade (1948-53).
The name Brockhouse keeps coming up intertwined with Indian during those years, although I’d have to do some serious research to keep the details straight. Besides the Papoose, I think they had something to do with the disastrous vertical twin (criminally under-engineered on the bottom end) that replaced the V-twin Scout, and the name kept popping up into the mid-50’s when Indians became nothing more than rebadged Royal Enfield motorcycles.
It’s almost as if there’s something incredibly British about certain marques: If the name pops up, failure is just around the corner.
Thank you so much for this, Syke! I didn’t investigate Brockhouse, so I had no idea they were tied to Indian. Very interesting stuff….
And I couldn’t agree more with your last sentence!
I’d read of the car before (through reading Lord Montagu’s ‘Lost Causes of Motoring’ in the school library, would you believe?), but gained the impression that the Brockhouse was the Achilles heel of an otherwise perfectly viable design. Takes our very own T87 to show that the car was not a viable product for its time anyway.
Yet another dream of prewar glories that found no footing in a postwar world.
I attended Retromobile in Paris last month, and there was an Invicta Black Prince convertible for sale on a vendor stand there. You can see my column on the show at: http://www.velocetoday.com
Kudos on this series, which I have found to be extremely well researched and well written and on some particularly obscure makes at that. A great deal of work must go into each article.
Regarding the comment that a Lagonda V12 was available from 1946-8, I would like to see evidence to support that. I owned one (chassis 16041, engine 89) for four decades. The English economy was in a very fragile state after the war and they desperately need hard currrency. Lagondas realized that the market for high end luxury cars like the V12 was over in 1945, and focused on a six cylinder car which did not compete directly with Rolls and Bentley. David Brown, tractor manufacturer, acquired Lagondas for the 6 cylinder motor which was roughly half of the V12 designed by W.O. Bentley, and used it to great effect in his other acquisition at the time, Aston Martin, for many years to come….
Running a prewar V12 for four decades, eh? Wow. Full respect. Any chance of a picture?
I’ve read a couple of sources on the turbulent times at Lagonda in the immediate postwar years, as they were developing the 2.6 litre. I distinctly remember the mention of a “handful” of prewar-type chassis being put together (or reconditioned, or left over from prewar stock?) after the war. I could only ever find one decent photo (below) of this coupe by HJ Mulliner, apparently first registered in 1950 allegedly on a postwar-built V12 chassis. Perhaps the British Lagonda club knows more…
T-87, you have supplied facts (and figures) that I have wondered about for 50 years!
One of the first automotive books I ever received was ‘The Great Cars’ by Ralph Stein, sometime in the late 60’s. In that book, he devotes a chapter to Invicta, mostly about its sports (and sporting) cars.
The last part of the chapter mentions the Black Prince and the Brockhouse converter, and that Invicta failed – and that’s all.
Thank you for the article.
Well, exactly the same tale here, only I got the book as (I suspect) one from the remainder’s pile 40 years ago. As a kid in the late ’70’s, no internet, not much in the libraries, that book was practically known to me by heart. To the point where even now I know without looking that Stein said the Invicta was “yclept” the Black Prince. Hilariously, I just guessed what it meant then: only this minute, 40 years on, have I looked it up to see it did indeed mean “by the name of”!
I almost mentioned the word ‘yclept’ in my post! I had no idea at the time what it meant, and only looked it up years later.
I’ve read some Invicta history, but not much on the Black Knight, so this really fills in some holes. I’m particularly interested in its IRS; I would assume it’s swing axles, but I can’t quite tell from the image.
The decision to use a torque converter for an obviously sporting car is highly questionable. But then so much about the decision to even build this car is in the same boat.
Paul, if I recall correctly, the FRONT suspension is the so-called ‘sliding pillar’ design. About the rear, I don’t know for sure.
In the bare chassis pic, I reckon you can just discern an outer u-joint, so not a swing axle, methinks. The specs page also mentions torsion bar springing for ALL wheels, so gawd knows, especially when comapared to the bare chassis pic which seems to show two coil spring thingys a side at rear. And what seems to be the top of sliding pillars at front. (And probably a partidge in a pear tree for all I know).
Here’s a link to an Australian ad (it is now for sale in an upcoming auction) in which (by photo 63 or so on) shows some photos under the car. If it’s the front end, it looks….obtuse.
There’s also a photo of the removed Brockhouse Carbuster (or whatever), which appears to also have a clutch.
Because England.
https://www.oldtimeraustralia.com/wp_car_dealer/1949-invicta-black-prince-drop-head-coupe-1-of-6-built/
Here’s other version (unfortunately rather lo-res) of the chassis drawing, with added detail on the suspensions…
Ah! It is (blurry) longitudnal torsion bars all round, forward-mount rack steering, fjardhutu-skollgefunganhungan suspension on front – alright, something like that, which on google bought up a Swedish ad for a Puch Dakota motorbike with that sliding pillar-looking front forks – double rear shocks and a clearly telescopic driveshaft thus proper independent rear.
Btw, turns out Swedish is fun to try and read. And that “sex” in Svensk means “six”, the latter of which may be useful information to someone here in the right circumstances for avoiding disappointment in the future.
Wow, that is very sophisticated. Twin sliding pillars at the back, but with a bottom wishbone moving the base of the pillars to give some camber-change.
Great write up of a very obscure car, I have read little bits about the black Prince in some Motor Industry trade magazines but never knew the entire story, the Brockhouse device was its mechanical downfall.
You should add the Vincent Black Prince motorcycle to the list of doomed products, This was a fully enclosed version of the famous Vincent Black Shadow announced in 1954. Vincent lost so much money on the Black Prince and Black Knight (same fairing on the milder Rapide) that they closed down at the end of 1955.
Like Invicta several attempts were made to revive Vincent in the 90s, which failed except for a small Australian operation making a few bikes a year.
You might like to know that DW News (Germany), 23/9/23 includes a video about car-loving Parsees in India, including one driving a an Invicta Black Prince.