The Invicta was a short-lived and essentially ‘vintage’ phenomenon, but its reputation lives on. Conceived by Noel Macklin, and financed by the Lyle family (the sugar millionaires) in the 1920s, a range of fine hand-built machines emerged from Surrey and were only on the market from 1925 to 1933. Smaller Invictas followed, but Macklin had already turned his enthusiasm to making American-based Railtons instead, and post-war Invictas died through lack of custom.
Each and every ‘vintage’ Invicta was a sporting car; most were open, and all had that indefinable ‘built like a battleship’ quality which Bentley had already made so familiar to British motorists. The company was small, and under-equipped, so Invicta only changed their design slowly, and used a large number of ‘bought-in’ or proprietary components, particularly their engines. Original Invictas used a Coventry-Climax engine, but from 1925 the team turned to Henry Meadows of Wolverhampton, who supplied its rugged six-cylinder power unit in a variety of sizes, most notably the famous 4H-litre size, which was also supplied to Lagonda and other concerns.
Apart from the impressive front-end styling, which featured riveted bonnet panels, and in imitation of the contemporary Rolls-Royce, the cars’ styling was unexceptional.
By 1930 the 4H-litre Invicta was available in two forms: as the high-chassis ‘A’ type, and the entirely different and much-lowered ‘S’ type, both at prices which approached those of the current Bentley and Rolls-Royce vehicles. |
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The S-type (sometimes nicknamed the ‘flat iron’) Invicta was usually supplied with a lightweight open sports car body, and could be an extremely successful competition car.
Although one car (driven by The Autocar’s sports editor, Sammy Davis) was involved in a lurid crash at Brooklands, another in the hands of Donald Healey won the 1931 Monte Carlo Rally. Built like a battleship, and with the sort of stump-pulling torque for which such vintage engines were famous, this was a car which appealed strongly to those who could afford one. Yet by the early 1930s, rich sportsmen were few and increasingly cautious with their money, so Invicta found itself running out of clients. According to Noel Macklin, there were two solutions: one was to produce a much smaller-engined car (which was a complete failure); the other was to turn to an altogether cheaper type of car, which appeared as the Railton.
All in all, no more than 500 4H-litre Invictas were ever made, only 77 being the charismatic S-type sports cars.
Every one of the original Invictas was developed around the same general chassis layout, which featured rock-hard half-elliptical front and rear suspension, and rod-operated drum brakes which were often inadequate for the car’s performance.
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