J Gurney Nutting & Co Limited
J Gurney Nutting & Co Limited was an English firm of bespoke coachbuilders specialising in sporting bodies founded in 1918 as a new enterprise by a Croydon firm of builders and joiners of the same name. The senior partner was Mr John (Jack) Gurney Nutting (1871–1946).
Nutting had done well from wartime government building contracts and with his partner from that business, a man named Cresswell, they set up operations in the old Marlborough Carriage Works in Oval Road, Croydon.
The first Gurney Nutting designs made their appearance at the London Motor Show in October 1920. In 1921 they displayed their 'all weather' body, the roof folded in the usual way but the great beauty of the arrangement was the side windows – they simply lowered into the doors.
After the Croydon premises were destroyed by fire during Easter 1923 the business was moved nearer their customers to the upmarket address of Elystan Street, off King's Road Chelsea, London SW3.
In Chelsea, which had been an artists' colony, Gurney Nutting established their reputation for creating sumptuous beautifully executed cars with panache and apparently naturally balanced proportions. 1924 brought two events that lifted the firm into prominence. The purchase of a licence to employ the Weymann technique of body construction gave a new silence and lightness to the cars of their customers who selected it and, more important, Scotsman A F McNeil (1891–1965), 'Mac', who had been with Cunard, joined the firm as chief designer. McNeil's designs would give the firm the greatest and most successful of its years.The Weymann construction forced a square-rigged style but McNeil's designs had a carefully calculated relationship in their proportions which seemed instinctively right.
In June 1926 a 21 hp Lanchester chassis fitted with a Weymann body was delivered to the future King George VI. A few months later his younger brother ordered a Weymann body on a Bentley chassis. The stand at the 1926 motor show had just Weymann designs, a 6 1⁄2-litre Bentley in black above white and a beautiful 37 hp Hispano-Suiza in black above primrose.
The car which built their reputation for prominent customers was built in 1928 for the style-setter of the time. In January 1928 the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, later still Duke of Windsor, commissioned a Weymann body on a 4 1⁄2-litre Bentley which was to have a high waistline with shallow windows allowing passengers increased privacy. The "Prince of Wales" body style became a best-seller. At the beginning of 1931 Nuttings received a Royal Warrant appointing the firm Motor Body Builders to His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales.
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