COVENTRY VICTOR
Unlike many of its contemporaries, Coventry Victor started life making not bicycles but aeroplanes! Begun by Thomas Morton and William Arthur Weaver in 1904, the pair then formed the Coventry Victor Motor Company in 1911. They had previously built and flown the first monoplane in Great Britain although ‘flown’ is perhaps an ambitious term for its first flights in 1906 during which it just about got off the ground, only to come straight back down again. But, by 1910, the Weaver Ornithoplane No 2, powered by one of Morton and Weaver’s own horizontally opposed engines, managed a flight of a full quarter of a mile.
Coventry Victor’s main business was making engines and as tool makers, rather surprisingly, it wasn’t until 1919 it made the lateral leap into producing a motorcycle using its own engine. Its 688cc flat twin was fitted to both solo and sidecar combinations, many of which went for commercial use, while the company also supplied engines to other motorcycle and cyclecar manufacturers.
Its best-remembered model is the Silent Six which was unveiled in 1927. By then, the company had moved into car production with a twoseater three-wheeler called the Coventry Victor Midget.
It was offered in a number of models, from the Standard to the Super Sports and the Parcelcar with prices starting at £75, all using variations of the company’s horizontally opposed twin. Motorcycle production came to a halt in 1936, followed by the car manufacture falling silent in 1938. Although, after the Second World War, bike production never resumed, the company did embark on a car project called
Venus, again using a 747cc flat twin in front of the front wheels. When the project was cancelled the six prototypes that had been made were ordered to be destroyed. However, somehow – and no one knows quite how – one escaped the crusher and can be seen in the excellent Coventry Transport Museum.
Coventry Victor continued to make engines for all types of industrial and marine applications – stationary, tractors, outboard motors – in both petrol and diesel format and remained in business until January 1971.