ARNO
The story of Arno Motor Company is a lesson in how quickly history can be lost in just a few decades. While a few examples of its motorcycles survive, who was actually behind
Arno Motor Company is clouded in mystery.
Some sources believe it was a Mr Hannon (or perhaps ‘Hammon’) who began the company and, as Hannon had previously been involved in the short-lived Clarendon Motorcycle company which, like Arno, had premises in Dale Street, Coventry, that seems to be quite likely.
However, motoring historian Damien Kimberley presents a convincing case for the driving force behind Arno to be one Arno Sthamer, a German immigrant who became a British citizen in 1898. Sthamer changed his name to the Anglicised
Arnold Starmer in September
1914 when it became increasingly uncomfortable to be German in this country – as the Mayor of Coventry, one Siegfried Bettmann, would also discover. Given that Arno began production of motor vehicles in 1906, it’s difficult to see why Sthamer would have kept such a low profile almost a decade before the Great War. But the fact remains that, in an age when motorcycle companies were frequently named after their owners or locations, Arno is indeed an unusual name for a Midlandsbased company.
In 1908, Arno exhibited both a motorcycle and a car at the
Stanley Show in London. The motorcycle had a 3hp engine and a rear-mounted chain-drive Bosch magneto, and was made at Arno’s new location in Gosford Street.
It was joined in 1909 by a 3.5hp engine version. Several motorcycles followed, including the TT, but in 1912 the company was wound up. Not for long, though; in May 1913, Arno reopened in Lamb
Street with a machine designed “for sidecar work”. It was a short-lived reappearance – within six months the doors shut once more. But there was still one last hurrah. In 1914, the TT was finished in red, made available with either a 3½ or 4½hp engine and the company renamed Red Arno. This version lasted longer than the previous incarnation, but only by a few months. By 1916, the Gosford Street factory was leased to William Montgomery, of Montgomery Motorcycles. Arnold Starmer later moved to Wolverhampton, where he was employed by Villiers until his death in 1938.