Coventry Simplex
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| Limited company | |
| Industry | Speciality machinery and engine manufacture |
| Fate | Purchased by Jaguar Cars, businesses merged by British Leyland or divested |
| Successor | Kalmar Climax (forklift business) |
| Founded | 1903 |
| Defunct | 1986 (Coventry Climax Holdings Ltd) |
| Headquarters | Coventry |
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Key people
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Lee Stroyer, Henry Pelham Lee, Leonard Pelham Lee, Walter Hassan, Harry Mundy, Peter Windsor Smith |
Coventry Climax was a British forklift truck, fire pump, racing, and other speciality engine manufacturer.
The company was started in 1903 as Lee Stroyer, but two years later, following the departure of Stroyer, it was relocated to Paynes Lane, Coventry, and renamed as Coventry-Simplex by H. Pelham Lee, a former Daimler employee, who saw a need for competition in the nascent piston engine market.
An early user was GWK, who produced over 1,000 light cars with Coventry-Simplex two-cylinder engines between 1911 and 1915. Just before World War I a Coventry-Simplex engine was used by Lionel Martin to power the first Aston Martin car.Ernest Shackleton selected Coventry-Simplex to power the tractors that were to be used in his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914.
Hundreds of Coventry-Simplex engines were manufactured during World War I to be used in generating sets for searchlights. In 1917 the company was renamed Coventry Climax and moved to East Street, Coventry.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s they supplied engines to many companies manufacturing light cars such as Abbey, AJS, Albatross, Ashton-Evans, Bayliss-Thomas, Clyno, Crossley, Crouch, GWK, Marendaz, Morgan, Triumph, Swift, and Standard. In the 1920s the company moved to Friars Road, Coventry and in the late 1930s they also acquired the former Riley premises on Widdrington Road, Coventry. In the early 1930s the company also supplied engines for buses.
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Wikipedia