Thomas Pullinger

Thomas Charles Willis Pullinger CBE OBE OBK JP (1867 – July 1945) was an English automobile engineer. He began his career working with bicycles before the first cars were built. After working for Sunbeam and Humber, he helped expand the Scottish works of Arrol-Johnston, where he developed structured apprenticeship programmes and an engineering college for women.

Eldest son of Fleet Paymaster Thomas Penford Pullinger, RN and his wife born Marianne Willis, he was born in Dartford, Kent, and while living in Bexley attended Dartford Grammar School, and was then apprenticed to long-established Dartford engineers, J & E Hall.

Following a stretch as a draughtsman at Woolwich Arsenal, he repaired then manufactured, most likely by assembling bought-in components, bicycles at New Cross and then in 1891 (while living in Bolt Street, Deptford) was sent by Humber to France for Humber's joint venture with the Gladiator Cycle Company. But Humber encountered difficulties and Pullinger stayed in France with Alexandre Darracq as Darracq's designer and personal assistant. He moved on as works manager to other French firms designing for Duncan and Superbie near Paris at Croissy perhaps the first small car. A 2-seater, it had a 2-cylinder horizontal engine, 2-speeds with friction clutches and a tubular frame. Duncan and Superbie built motorcycles under licence from Hildebrand & Wolfmüller. At Teste & Moret of Lyon in 1896 he used a 2¼ horsepower de Dion engine to build a car he named La Mouche or The Fly. To solve the cooling problems of high-speed air-cooled engines he designed the first water-cooled cylinder head and many were bought by de Dion Bouton. Pullinger was particularly interested in the kind of cars built on the opposite side of Lyon by a Marius Berliet at Audibert & Lavirotte

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