GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Sir Dennistoun Burney, master of streamlining
to suggest Sir Dennistoun Burney saw the 1954 film
Waterfront, but if he had he would surely have felt a pang of sympathy when Marlon Brando delivered the immortal line: ‘I could have been a contender.’ Brando, of course, was referring to a missed opportunity to have a shot at a title fight, but Burney’s great regret was his failure to convince the British and US automobile industries that the streamlined rear-engined car was the way forward. Ironically, by 1954 the VW Beetle was well on the way to becoming a phenomenon and other manufacturers were scrabbling to follow suit.
Baronet, Naval Commander, Tory MP, entrepreneur, showman, author, engineer, inventor, Charles Dennistoun Burney – known as Sir Dennis – was born in Bermuda on 28 December 1888. As one of three children, but the only son of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Cecil Burney, it was pre-ordained that he would have a naval education and at 15 he was dispatched to the Royal Navy’s training ship, HMS
Britannia, in Dartmouth. Two years later he became a midshipman on HMS
Several ships later, Burney was involved in experimental anti-submarine duty on HMS
Crusader, dragging a long cable attached to a kite down which explosives could be slid. It was not successful but fired Burney’s imagination for invention, setting him on a course that would result in him amassing over 100 patents.
Burney bobbed in and out of the Navy, arranging extended leave with institutions where he could develop his radical ideas. In 1911 he joined what would become the Bristol Aeroplane Company and, in secret, developed a brace of seaplanes that had hydrofoil undercarriage and supplementary propulsion on the water by nautical propellers.
His work with hydrofoils then led him to invent the Paravane during World War One. He patented this anti-mine device and it made him a wealthy man when he received £350,000 for the patent rights. For his efforts he was also appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG).
Burney retired from the Navy in 1920 and in 1922 became the Conservative MP for Uxbridge (our current Prime Minister’s constituency). During his seven-year tenure, Burney was a vocal and energetic advocate of air transport. Simultaneously he became a consultant for Vickers, where he headed the team building the R100 airship, with Barnes Wallis as chief designer and Nevil Shute Norway – who was running a parallel career as a novelist – as chief stress engineer. Despite making it to Canada and back, the R100 was eventually scrapped after its competitor, the R101, crashed and burned on its maiden flight.
Convinced that applying airship streamlining to the automobile would be advantageous, in 1927 he formed Streamline Cars Ltd to sell his ideas to the motor industry. The resulting car resembled an airship on wheels and, in fact, the fabric-covered prototype was built using ‘diverted’ metal and fabric from the R100.
Comparison with a dirigible from the enthusiastic press was inevitable, The Motor observing that ‘one might be in the forward gondola of an absolutely noiseless airship’. The
Autocar called it ‘an R100 on wheels’. Burney’s objective was not actually to sell cars, but licences. Standard, Riley and Lagonda all expressed interest, while negotiations with Bentley collapsed only when it was taken over by Rolls-Royce in 1931. Rolls-Royce appraised the car (at £1500 and seating seven, it was very much in Rolls-Royce’s territory), with the tester declaring ‘it is sufficiently good to be very disturbing’ and ‘I should not like the responsibility of turning it down’. Yet turn it down Sir Henry did. Even Royal patronage couldn’t help. Burney actually persuaded Edward, Prince of Wales, the most fashionable man of the day, to buy a car at a very favourable price, but it still failed to find buyers.
Undaunted, in 1932 Burney set off to convert Detroit in a Streamline fitted with an American Lycoming engine. Press coverage was similarly animated – Popular Science Monthly featured a dynamic cover illustration of a partially airborne Burney – but the nabobs of Detroit concluded that it was just too unconventional.
Rather improbably, the staid Crossley Motors of Manchester took up Burney’s patents and turned out 25 of the ugliest cars to hit the Queen’s highway. Streamline Cars itself went out of business in 1934 after producing only 12 vehicles. Like many pioneers, Burney was too far in advance of the public taste and, frankly, the Streamline was not the prettiest.
Sir Dennis, by then a Baronet, continued inventing, creating the High Explosive Squash Head Shell (HESH) and the recoilless Burney Gun during World War Two and developing sonar for fishing fleets after it. Burney maintained a home in Bermuda to which he eventually retired, dying there in 1968.
‘COMPARISON WITH A DIRIGIBLE WAS INEVITABLE FROM THE PRESS… THE AUTOCAR CALLED IT “AN R100 ON WHEELS”’