Like Arrol-Johnston, Argyll was a respected Scottish motoring pioneer and built its first Renault-based cars in Glasgow in 1899. Unhappily, its management was deluded enough to build a vast new factory in Alexandria (near Loch Lomond), which it never filled with work, and which never came remotely close to profitability. Burdened with debt (and problems with its sleeve-valve engines), Argyll closed down for the first time in 1914, and the factory turned to other products.
Daimler had been the first British concern to adopt sleeve-valve engines (which oscillated up and down between the pistons and the cylinder block walls, opening and closing inlet and exhaust ports as they did so) and by sheer application made them work well. Argyll, with fewer resources, did not.
The original sleeve-valve Argyll was the big 25 hp (25/50) model first shown in 1911, and on sale in the following year. Except for its engine, which was big, sturdy and carefully detailed both in design and finish, with its cylinder cast in pairs, the 25/50 was an otherwise conventional machine, the top of Argyll’s range, and intended to sell to the prosperous who might otherwise be in the market for a Daimler, or similar prestigious motor car.
Not only did the 25/50 hp buyer get a wide choice of stylish, up-to-the-minute coachwork (most of which was erected in the factory at Alexandria), but he got a modern chassis, which included four-wheel brakes (a real innovation by 1912 standards), a quiet and flexible engine, a four-speed transmission which included a rigid torque-tube connection between the gearbox and the back axle, along with a soft and comfortable ride, and a very high level of standard equipment. |
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If the new-fangled engine had worked well from the outset, and if there had not been expensive legal problems about the infringement of another company’s patent rights, Argyll’s future might have been assured. But with prices of complete cars starting at £640 (a considerable sum for 1912), sales were limited.
Argyll soon decided to apply the same technical principle to its cheaper models, some with engines as small as 1.5-litres. Sleeve-valve engines, however, did not work as well in smaller engines, and since it was those cars which were selling increasingly well in the years before the outbreak of the First World War, Argyll was at a disadvantage.
Argyll was revived as a marque after the war in the original Glasgow factory, although the magnificent 25/50 model was not part of the post-war range. Although 1.6-litre and 2.3-litre sleeve-valve engines continued to be made, but there was no further innovation after 1922, and the last Argylls were produced in 1928.
Early Argylls had conventional (by 1900s standards) engines, but from 1909 they took up the development and manufacture of sleeve-valve engines, which were quieter and technically modern, but required precise technology and manufacturing to work properly. |
