Coventry Climax was a
British
forklift truck, fire pump, and speciality engine manufacturer.
History
The
company was started in 1903 as Lee
Stroyer, but two years later following the departure of
Stroyer, was relocated to Paynes Lane, Coventry
, and renamed
to Coventry-Simplex by H. Pelham
Lee, a former
Daimler
employee, who saw a need for competition in the nascent
piston engine market.
Coventry Climax first became well known for supplying motors for
the tractor used by Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition in
1914. .
An early user was
GWK, who produced over
1000 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 to
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 ex-
Riley premises in
Widdrington Road, Coventry. In the early 1930s the company also
supplied engines for buses.
1930s expanded to include Triumph, Morgan and Standard.With the
closure of Swift in 1931 they were left with a stock of engines
that were converted to drive electric generators giving the company
an entry into a new field. The economic problems of the 1930s hit
the business hard and Leonard Pelham Lee, who had taken over from
his father, diversified into the production of water-pumping
equipment and the "Godiva" was born. This Fire Engine which saw
widespread use during the Second World War was better known to the
public as the "Green Godess". Post-war Coventry Climax users
included
Clan,
Hillman,
Kieft,
Lotus,
Cooper,
and
TVR.
In the late 1940s, the company shifted away from automobile engines
and into other markets, including diesels for
marine and
fire pumps and
fork lift trucks. In 1946 the
ET199 was announced,
which the company claimed was the first British produced forklift
truck. The ET 199 was designed to carry a load with a load centre,
and with a lift height.
In 1950
Walter Hassan, ex
Jaguar and
Bentley joined them, and a new
lightweight overhead camshaft engine was developed called the
FW (Feather Weight).The engine was displayed at
the Motor Show in London and attracted attention from the motor
racing fraternity. Lee concluded that success in competition would
lead to more customers for the company and so Hassan designed the
FWA, a feather weight engine for automobiles. The first Coventry
Climax racing engine appeared at the 1954 Le Mans 24 Hours in the
back of a Kieft chassis but this failed to finish the event. The
engine became popular in sportscar racing and was followed by a
Mark II and then by an FWB which had a capacity of nearly
1.5-liters. The new Formula 2 regulations suited the 1.5-liter
engine and it quickly became the engine to have in F2. The
following year the first Climax engines began to appear in Formula
1 in the back of Cooper chassis. Initially these were FWBs but the
FPF engine followed. Stirling Moss scored the company's first
Formula 1 victory in Argentina in 1958, using a 1.9-liter version
of the engine. In general terms, however, the engines were not
powerful enough to compete with the 2.5-liter machinery and it was
not until the 2.5-liter version of the FPF arrived in 1959 that
Jack Brabham was able to win the World Championship in a
Cooper-Climax. At the same time the company produced the FWE engine
for the Lotus Elite and this enjoyed considerable success in
sportscar racing, with a series of class wins at Le Mans in the
early 1960s. In 1961 there was a new 1.5-liter formula and the FPF
engine was given a new lease of life, although the company began
work on a V8 engine, designated the FWMW, and this began winning
races in 1962 with Jim Clark. There would be a total of 22 Grand
Prix victories before 1966 when the new 3-liter formula was
introduced.
Away from the car engine business Coventry Climax used their marine
diesel experience to further develop and build the
Armstrong Whitworth supercharged
H30 multi fuel engine for military use. This has
been fitted as an auxiliary engine in the British
Chieftain and
Challenger battle tanks and
Rapier anti aircraft missile systems.
The company was purchased by
Jaguar Cars
in 1963, which itself merged with the
British Motor Corporation (BMC) in
1966 to form
British Motor
Holdings (BMH), BMH then merged with the
Leyland Motor Corporation in 1968
to form the
British
Leyland Motor Corporation, which was then nationalised in 1975
as British Leyland (BL). Coventry Climax became part of the British
Leyland Special Products division - alongside
Alvis,
Aveling-Barford and others. At the end of
1978 BL brought together Coventry Climax Limited, Leyland Vehicles
Limited (trucks, buses and tractors), Alvis Limited (military
vehicles) and
Self-Changing Gears
Limited (heavy-duty transmissions), into a new group called BL
Commercial Vehicles (BLCV) under managing director
David Abell.
In the
early 1970s the fire pump business was sold back into private
ownership, and the Godiva Fire
Pumps company was formed in Warwick
.
In 1977 Coventry Climax acquired the Warrington forklift truck
business of
Rubery Owen Conveyancer,
renaming it to
Climax Conveyancer.
1982 saw the sell-off by BL of the Coventry Climax forklift truck
business back into private ownership, to Coventry Climax Holdings
Limited.
Sir Emmanuel Kaye, also
chairman and a major shareholder of
Lansing Bagnall at the time, formed the
company, independent of his other interests for the purpose of
acquiring Coventry Climax.
In 1986 Coventry Climax went into receivership and was acquired by
Cronin Tubular.
In 1990 a further
change of ownership came with the engine business being sold to
Horstman Defence Systems of
Bath
, Somerset
thus breaking the link with Coventry.
Kalmar Industries acquired the
forklift truck interests of Coventry Climax in 1985, the company
traded as Kalmar Climax for a few years, but is now trading as
Kalmar Industries Ltd.
A new company has been registered #7041991 COVENTRY CLIMAX
ENGINEERING LTD. that plan to build new Coventry Climax FPF 2.5
liter F1 engines for the Kieft 'Corsa Veloce'. Based in Chichester
owned by Canadian Peter Schömer.
The engines
OC
The
OC was initially made with a capacity of
1122 cc
straight-4 with bore of
63 mm and stroke of 90 mm with overhead inlet and side
exhaust valves producing . It was introduced in the early 1930s and
also built under licence by
Triumph.
JM
A six cylinder version of the OC engine, the
JM,
was made with a capacity of 1476 cc developing . The
JMC version had a capacity increase to
1640 cc by increasing the bore to 63 mm and produced
.
FW
The
FW 38 hp 1020 cc straight-4 SOHC was
designed by Walter Hassan and Harry Mundy as the motive unit for a
portable service firepump. In 1953 it was adapted for automotive
racing as the 1097 cc
FWA, producing it was first
used at Le Mans in 1954 by
Kieft Cars.
The larger bore and longer stroke 1460 cc
FWB
engine followed producing a nominal . The most significant of the
series was the
FWE which used the
FWB bore size and the
FWA stroke;
it was specifically designed for the first generation
Lotus Elite but became a firm favorite with a
number of sports car racing firms for its racing durability and
high
power-to-weight ratio.
Other FW variants included a short stroke version of the
FWA to produce the 750 cc
FWC as
used by
Dan Gurney early in his career in
US club racing. the objective of this engine was for the successful
Lotus campaign to win the Le Mans Index of performance prize in
1957. The
FWMA engine was a follow up to the
FWC and was based on the
FWM
marine engine. In its automotive guise as the
FWMA
it was less successful than the
FWC when used by
Lotus cars, but was eventually adapted by
Rootes to provide the lightweight
engine for the
Hillman Imp.
FWE
powered Lotus Elite cars won their class
six times and the 'Index of thermal Efficiency' once during the
24 Hours of Le
Mans
. FW series engines in
modified forms also powered
Lotus
Eleven cars which took three class wins at Le Mans and one
'Index of Performance' win.
FP
The
FPF was a pure-racing development twin cam
version from the basic FWB layout — it started life as a 1.5 L
Formula Two engine, and was gradually
enlarged as an F1 unit; a 2.0 L version took
Stirling Moss and
Maurice Trintignant to
Cooper's first two Grand Prix victories
against 2.5 L opposition; the engine later grew to a
full-sized 2.5 L
Formula One and
grew to 2.7 L for
Indy and the
Tasman Series, and even saw use as a stopgap
in 1966 3.0 L
Formula One
racing.
One special engine from the company, developed from the marine
engine, was the
FWMV Coventry Climax V8. It
produced and was used by many racing cars from Lotus, including the
Lotus 24,
Lotus 25,
and
Lotus 33 and
Cooper including the Formula One
Cooper T51. Climax powered Lotus 25s and 33s won
the
Formula One World Championships in 1963 and 1965
driven by
Jim Clark.
Climax built two notable engines un-raced in their original form —
first the V8
FPE ("Godiva"), which was intended
for the start of the 2.5 L Formula One in 1954 (withdrawn due
to fears about the rumoured power of Mercedes and other engines,
but in fact it would have been competitive ).
Paul Emery acquired a Godiva and fitted it to an
old F3 chassis to make the Shannon F1 car in 1966, and the engine
later ran in something close to its original form in the
Kieft Grand Prix car when that was finally
finished in 2003. The other un-raced engine was the flat-16
FWMW; work on this continued through the later
years of the 1.5 L formula with Lotus and Brabham the likely
recipients, but there were a number of design issues still to solve
before the formula ran out. At this time the engine had not only
shown little power advantage over the V8 it had a number of design
complexities that would either have taken a major rework to solve
or at least resulted in the need for complete engine rebuilds after
3 hours running. The fact that the conjoined 3 part crank tended to
move radially resulting in the engine becoming two aphasic V8s,
also the central spur gear drive to parallel quill shaft driving
flywheel caused several problems.
F1 engines
The F1 engines were as follows:
- 1954 2.5 litre V-8 2.94 x 2.80" @ 7,900 rpm Godiva
- 1959 2.5 litre 4 cyl 3.70 x 3.50" @6,500 rpm
- 1960 2.5 litre 4 cyl 3.70 x 3.54" @ 6,750 rpm
- 1960 1.5 litre 4 cyl 3.20 x 2.80" Formula 2
- 1961 2.75 litre 4 cyl 3.78 x 3.74" Tasman and Indianapolis
- 1961 1.5 litre 4 cyl 3.22 x 2.80" @ 7,500 rpm
- 1962 1.5 litre V-8 2.48 x 2.36" @ 8,500 rpm
- 1963 1.5 litre V-8 2.675 x 2.03" @ 9,500 rpm fuel
injection
- 1964 1.5 litre V-8 2.85 x 1.79" @ 9,750 rpm
- 1965 1.5 litre V-8 2.85 x 1.79" @ 10,500 rpm 4 valve/cyl
- 1966 2.0 litre V-8 2.85 x 2.36" @ 8,900 rpm 4 valve/cyl
- 1965 1.5 litre F-16 2.13 x 1.60" 220/225 bhp @ 12,000 rpm
2 valve/cyl (209 bhp measured)
Climax-powered vehicles
Some notable Coventry Climax-powered cars:
See also
References
- 'Coventry Climax Racing Engines: The Definitive Development
History' Author — Des Hammill (ISBN 1-903706-83-1)
- Coventry Climax Engines Ltd
Notes
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