15 Facts About George Lanchester

George Herbert Lanchester was an English engineer.

George Lanchester was one of three brothers who played a leading role in the early development of the UK auto-industry.

In 1909, following the departure from full-time involvement with the company of his elder brother Frederick, George took over responsibility for the Lanchester Motor Company.

Thereafter, while Frederick pursued his own glittering career as one of the leading automotive and aeronautical engineers of the time, it was George who ran the business the brothers had established together.

In 1889, at the age of 15, George Lanchester started an apprenticeship with the Forward Gas Engine Company in Birmingham.

George Lanchester quickly developed deep insights into the nascent techniques of auto-production methodology.

George Lanchester's duties extended to delivering cars to the more important customers, reportedly on one occasion suffering twenty tire bursts or punctures between Birmingham and Brighton on a single delivery job.

The aftermath of war saw a rapid return for the Lanchester 40, but now George was able to install an overhead camshaft engine, and this set the pattern for the six- and eight-cylinder Lanchester engines which built the company's name between 1919 and 1931.

The George Lanchester bodies used aluminium panels: the three-speed epicyclic gear-boxes and cantilever rear springs were familiar from George Lanchester's own pre-war designs.

Lanchesters were distinguished by the smoothness of the engines which George designed, paying close attention to detail.

The driveshaft was located to minimise vibration, and close attention was paid to manifold design, with George Lanchester using transparent pipes to locate and remedy deposits appearing on the induction pipes at certain throttle settings.

George Lanchester was steamrollered into a sale of the business to BSA-Daimler which had a much larger overdraft, but which, as a major military supplier, enjoyed a privileged position with a UK political and banking establishment which remembered too well one world war and were no doubt mindful of a need to prepare for the next one.

George saw his own Lanchester designs scrapped, while Lanchester increasingly became a manufacturer of Daimler type vehicles.

In 1936 George Lanchester left the company he had founded with his brothers and went to work for Alvis.

George Lanchester's wife having died in the early 1950s, George's final years were buoyed up by a second marriage but hampered by his failing eyesight.