Crossley Motors
 |
|
| Fate | Acquired and closed down |
|---|---|
| Successor | AEC |
| Founded | 1906 |
| Defunct | 1958 |
| Headquarters | Manchester, England |
Crossley Motors was a British motor vehicle manufacturer based in Manchester, England. They produced approximately 19,000 high-quality cars from 1904 until 1938, 5,500 buses from 1926 until 1958 and 21,000 goods and military vehicles from 1914 to 1945.
Crossley Brothers, originally manufacturers of textile machinery and rubber processing plant, began the licensed manufacture of the Otto internal combustion engine before 1880. The firm started car production in 1903, building around 650 vehicles in their first year.
The company was originally created as a division of engine builders Crossley Brothers, but from 1910 became a stand-alone company. Although founded as a car maker, they were major suppliers of vehicles to British forces during World War I, and in the 1920s moved into bus manufacture. With re-armament in the 1930s, car-making was run down, and stopped completely in 1936. During World War II output was again concentrated on military vehicles. Bus production resumed in 1945 but no more cars were made. The directors decided in the late 1940s that the company was too small to survive alone and agreed a take over by AEC. Production at the Crossley factories finally stopped in 1958.
Crossley Motors Ltd was first registered on 11 April 1906 (and re-registered with a different company number in 1910) as the vehicle manufacturing arm of Crossley Brothers. The first car was actually built in 1903 to a design by J.S. Critchley who had been with Daimler and exhibited at the Society of Motor Manufacturers' Exhibition at Crystal Palace in February 1904, but the parent company saw a future for these new machines and decided a separate company was required.
In 1920 Crossley Motors bought 34,283 (68.5%) of the 50,000 issued shares of the nearby A V Roe and Company – better known as Avro. Crossley took over Avro's car manufacturing business but Avro continued its aircraft manufacturing operations independently. Crossley had to sell their shares in Avro to Armstrong Siddeley in 1928 to pay for the losses incurred in Willys Overland Crossley.
...
Wikipedia