Although this car’s name was quaint, there was nothing strange about its engineering, or its behaviour. Established in Birmingham in 1899, the company started with a single-cylinder machine. As with most such British machines, inspiration came from overseas, for this ‘Traveller’ was merely a quadricycle with a French de Dion engine.
The company did not really make its name until 1905, when the original own-design twin-cylinder 10/12 went on sale. Although this was a major new undertaking, Alldays was confident of success. The general feeling in the company, and throughout Birmingham, where Britain’s nascent motor industry was based, was that motor car sales were continually increasing, and that anything was possible.
The first twentieth-century Alldays & Onions model was the 7 hp of 1904, which had a modern-looking layout and style, but was powered only by a side-valve, single-cylinder, front-mounted engine. This was merely the start for the company’s development, but it showed that the company already knew what would appeal to the public. |
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Like other early-1900s British cars, the 7 hp looked chunky and purposeful, with a sturdy frame, lofty seating positions, and a conventional chassis which included leaf-spring suspension and artillery-style wooden wheels. The original 10/12s had simple chassis frames, with artillery-style wooden wheels and pneumatic tyres (though these, alas, were by no means as puncture resistant as the makers would have liked). The engine was a water-cooled vertical twin with side-valves, and was soon renowned as a smooth, no-nonsense slogger.
Alldays were so ambitious (and self-confident) that in 1908 they absorbed the car-maker Enfield of Redditch (the same company with connections to the famous rifle and bicycle business), and developed new and more expensive cars. The 10/12 was therefore allowed to languish, and the last Alldays-badged cars were sold in 1918, for by this time the business had developed its alternative (and expensive) Enfield-Alldays range, which sold in limited numbers until 1925.
Once seen as sturdy and long-lasting, its reputation spread rapidly by word of mouth and it became one of Britain’s most successful ‘small’ cars. It was not until the market’s stability was upset by the arrival of the Morris Bullnose model, and the cheap Ford Model T, that its popularity died away. |
