Although glamorous cars like the massive Bentleys, and sports cars such as the Frazer Nash made most of the headlines at the time, the ‘vintage era’ – roughly speaking the 1920s – saw many more worthy, rather individual, and charming (though slow) family cars go on sale. The Bean, from Dudley, in the West Midlands, was a very popular example of that type.
Bean shot to fame and back to obscurity in only ten years during the 1920s. The business was established immediately after the First World War (the original Bean was actually a remodelling of the ‘Perry’ light car) and produced more than 4,000 cars a year in the middle of the period. It rapidly faded as the ‘Hatfield Bean’ and failed to survive the marketing onslaught from cheaper cars like the Morris Cowley and Oxford.
The first Bean of 1919 was a stolidly-engineered and styled 12 hp model (or ‘11.9’). The factory at Tipton, Dudley was well-capitalised, but the company’s ambitions stretched their finances, and survival was always a struggle.
The Bean 12 was updated in 1924, and the larger, heavier and longer 14 was produced in the same year. Rugged but unexciting, both types had a four-cylinder side-valve engine (the 14 having a 2,386 cc type); the 12 had a separate three-speed, while the 14’s engine was in a unit with a four-speed gearbox. In both cases the performance was no more than adequate by the standards of the day. Many customers, however, did not mind this, especially as the national speed limit was a mere 20 mph. |
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Beans were relatively modern and well specified for 1925. Prices ranged from £335 to £395 for the 12 hp, and from £375 for a three-seater Tourer 14, to £585 for a well equipped saloon.
The mid-1920s, however, were the high point for Bean, which had once talked of selling 10,000 cars every year, but never came close to achieving that mark. Although cheaper (and better) than many of their rivals, they were coming under increasing competition from Austin and Morris, with the cheapest Morris Cowley retailing for no more than £175.
By developing a Meadows six-cylinder engined car (the 18/50), Bean found itself saddled with more capital expenditure than it could handle in the long term; other expensive models did not sell as well as planned, and the last cars (but not commercial vehicles) were made in 1929. No fewer than 10,000 11.9s and 4,000 14s were built, figures which dwarfed those achieved by the later models.
From end to end, this was a typical vintage family car,
with a high, sturdy chassis, a low revving side-valve engine, and artillery-pattern road wheels with four-wheel brakes and shock absorbers all round.
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