The best way to describe the Trojan is as eccentric, for its design flew in the face of almost every trend and accepted practice of the period. Leslie Hounsfield laid out this mid-engined machine so well and so successfully, however, that Leyland (the truck specialists), adopted the design and put it into production at Ham, near Kingston-upon-Thames in 1922.
No performance car, and certainly not a looker, it nevertheless appealed to so many that more than 16,000 cars were built in the 1920s alone. Although a Trojan Utility looked conventional enough apart from the radiator and the fuel tank, there was almost nothing under the bonnet, for the hilariously simple (and in theory, quite impractical) two-stroke engine was situated under the rear floor, driving the rear wheels through a two-speed and reverse epicyclic gearbox. The ‘self-starter’ was a ratchetted lever on the floor, to the right of the driver.
The chassis was a rigid punt-type platform, and although there was plenty of ground clearance and soft cantilever leaf springs at front and rear, the ride was not helped by the presence of very thin, solid tyres. All this, the slow and utterly metronomic quality of the long-stroke engine, and the ability to change gear without a clutch pedal (although one was provided to make timid drivers feel at home), made the Trojan an acquired taste.
The fact that it was an extremely simple vintage car, costing little to run, and almost nothing to maintain (many reached 100,000 miles needing little more than a periodic de-coking of the engine), meant that it soon established its own market, though motoring pundits were never impressed. |
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One of the Trojan’s greatest fans, historian Anthony Bird, pointed out that it was almost comic in everything it did, that many professional testers ‘praised it with faint damns’, and that the motor trade itself was openly hostile to a machine which rarely gave them any work. No-one bought a Trojan if they were in a hurry, for at any speed above 25 mph, the hammering transmitted through the solid tyres from the poor roads of the period could be extremely uncomfortable. On the other hand, because of its good low-speed engine torque, and its solid rear axle (no differential was fitted), it was a car for climbing every hill, even in the most appalling weather.
One very important, high-profile, fleet contract was obtained: from Brooke Bond, the tea manufacturers, who bought more than 5,000 Trojans over the years for delivery van use, and kept them almost indefinitely, so in cities, at least, the Trojan was always prominent.
Assembly by Leyland ended in 1926, but was revived by Hounsfield himself a year later, in Croydon. Updated only as necessary (which was very little), the ‘Utility’ became the ‘Ten’, and maintained a following until the mid-1930s, when car production finally ended.
Although this car had a large bonnet behind the radiator, the engine was positioned under the rear floor. The solid tyres made any journey very uncomfortable on the poor road surfaces of the time.
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