From the archives of Bob Montgomery, motoring historian
FREDERICK LANCHESTER: Of all the forgotten pioneers of the development of the automobile, the name of Frederick Lanchester is foremost. The legacy of this extraordinary man is such that The Autocar magazine was once moved to declare that "out of the 36 primary features found in the modern car, Lanchester was responsible for inventing 18."
Examples of his genius are not hard to find, and include many items that we think of as modern or of recent invention, yet Lanchester was using such things as turbocharging, four-wheel-drive, power steering, disc brakes and smooth-running engines at the start of the last century!
Frederick Lanchester was born in Lewisham in 1868, one of eight brothers, two of whom, George and Frank, also became involved in the automobile industry. He studied engineering at the Royal College of Science in South Kensington, but dropped out of his course to study mining; at the same time taking evening classes in mechanics.
At first, his major interest was aerodynamics, but after setting up his own workshop he designed and built his first engine which was fitted to a flat-bottomed boat designed by his brothers. This craft, when launched in 1894, was the first British motorboat.
As a result of this project, Lanchester developed Britain's first four-wheeled petrol-driven car the following year, 1895. Lanchester had seen vehicles developed by Mercedes-Benz and Daimler and dismissed them as crude. Many years later, the president of the Institution of Automobile Engineers, Percy Kidner, said: "It would not be an exaggeration to call Frederick Lanchester the designer of the first genuine automobile."
Initially, Lanchester's car proved underpowered, but he re-engineered the power unit and found that it could carry six adults at speeds up to a then remarkable 18 mph with a fuel consumption of 23 mpg. A whole series of inventions and patents soon followed this success: the accelerator pedal replaced a lever, the steering wheel replaced the tiller, rack-and-pinion steering replaced rods and linked stub-axles, wire wheels replaced wooden artillery-type wheels and worm-drive replaced the chains that took the drive to the wheels. All of these were Lanchester's original ideas.
In 1900, together with his two brothers, Frederick Lanchester set up the Lanchester Engine Company. Despite several more momentous innovations, in 1904 the company was declared bankrupt, before being reformed as the Lanchester Motor Company.
Lanchester cars tended to be unusual and complex, and it is fair to say that the brothers had little idea of how to run a business successfully while Frederick was simply interested in achieving technical excellence - with no regard for cost or commercial reality.
As a result the company's products were never promoted in the way that they deserved, and it was little surprise when Daimler acquired the company in 1931. Frederick Lanchester then turned his attention to aviation, in which field he continued to produce ground-breaking innovative designs, eventually acquiring in his lifetime no fewer than 426 patents.
Frederick Lanchester died in 1946 leaving behind no children to carry on his ideas and a widow who had no interest in continuing his business interests.
Today, few know of his extraordinary contribution to the design of the cars we drive or his contribution in the early days of motoring to the lay-out of cars with which we are familiar today.