• Current opened records

  • Clyno Engineering Co Ltd

Aero-engine manufacturers
Operating dates:
  • 1909 - 1929
Location:
  • Wolverhampton, West Midlands
History:
  • Clyno Engineering Co was founded in 1909 in Thrapston, Northamptonshire, by two cousins, Frank and Ailwyn Smith, and named for an innovative pulley designed for belt-driven machines known as the ‘inclined pully’. In 1910 the partnership began to make complete motorcycles and moved to Wolverhampton, West Midlands, after acquiring works in Pelham Street formerly occupied by Stevens Motor Manufacturing Co Ltd which had supplied engines to Clyno Engineering Co. Clyno Engineering Co exhibited for the first time at the 1910 motorcycle show at Olympia, displaying motorcycles, adjustable pulleys and telescopic stands, and regularly had a presence at challenging motorcycle trials. This promotional effort brought in orders in excess of manufacturing capacity in 1912. That year the company took over the unoccupied Humber Ltd cycle factory on the opposite side of Pelham Street from its existing factory. In 1913 the firm released an affordable road-ready 250cc motorcycle which it exhibited at the 1913 motor cycle show. The model was a major success. During the First World War Clyno, with Vickers, created and produced a motorcycle with a machine gun attachment in large numbers. Clyno was chosen as supplier of the standard motorcycle combination outfit for the Motor Machine Gun Service in 1915 and by the 1918 armistice the British armed forces had 1,792 Clyno motorcycles. Clyno also supplied the Russian army. In June 1916 Ailwyn Smith left the company to join Samuel Taylor & Sons, and the company appears to have been renamed Clyno Engineering Co Ltd. The firm continued to supply the war effort providing mobile machine gun units, ammunition carriers and building Dragonfly aircraft engines. After the war, the motorcycle industry collapsed. Henry Meadows, Clyno's works manager left to found his own business, the sale of surplus army motor cycles undercut prices, there were raw material shortages and the Russians failed to pay for their wartime orders. In 1920 Clyno Engineering Co went into liquidation. Subsequently, in 1922, Frank Smith resurrected the company under the name Clyno Engineering Co (1922) Ltd, focusing on car production. Motorcycle manufacture ended by 1923. This company was wound up in 1929 but, at its peak, Clyno Engineering Co (1922) Ltd was the third largest car manufacturer in the UK after Austin and Morris.
Principle aero-engines manufactured:
  • ABC Dragonfly (1918).
Records 1:
Records 2:
Records 3:

  • The National Archives 

    Petition of right and settlement re claim against Ministry of Munitions 1922-23 [HO45/11086/433164, MUN 4/6425]; Clyno Engineering Co Ltd, companies court, winding up proceedings and liquidator’s accounts 1919-32 [BT34/4423/158733, BT31/25008/158733, J13/8434]; Clyno Engineering Co (1922) Ltd, companies court, winding up proceedings, registrar’s notes and dissolved company file 1928-32 [J107/47/336, J13/12216, BT31/27323/182945].

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