Killed By Rumour

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31986, 13 May 1969, Page 23

Killed By Rumour

ANYTHING that William Morris could do, everyone at a little car factory in Wolverhampton could do as well, and usually better. For more than 20 years this was the motto of the Clyno Engineering Company, and in the end it was to prove fatal. In the early 1920 s the Clyno, with the leanest of resources, challenged the might of the Morris empire on its own terms—and very nearly beat it. Nearly 50,000 Clynos went on the road from 1922 to 1928, but to keep up such frantic production the firm sank into debt, and never recovered.

This was a pity. The 1368 c.c., four-cylinder Clyno, which made its debut at the 1922 motor show, was one of the best economy cars of its time.

A. G. Booth, later to be remembered as designer of the famed Singer Le Mans, did the drawings, and provided brakes and steering that cars well above the

Clyno's price range could not better. Why did it fail? Mainly because by 1928 the urge to better whatever Morris did had become a near-obsession. When rumour had it that their rivals were planning the first £lOO car, the Clyno company abandoned plans fori a new middle-priced model and immediately turned out a cheap and hurriedly conceived version of the Clyno Nine.

This sold for £ll2—but so infrequently. that’ it dragged the company into a financial morass from which it never emerged. If Clynos had stuck to limited production of quality cars they might well have survived. But they could not resist a chance to put one over Morris. '

It was a classic irony that the £lOO rumour was premature anyway. Morris did not produce a cut-price car for another three years, and by then there was no one at Clynos to care.