1911 Vauxhall Prince Henry 20hp ●

Prince Albert William Henry of Prussia was a grandson of Queen Victoria and brother to Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. He was totally enthusiastic about everything to do with motor cars and motoring and Germany was then (as now) the centre of automotive development. Between 1907 and 1911, he sponsored a 1,200 mile competitive ‘Tour’ which was named after him and many years later morphed into the German Grand Prix. The only cars that were able to compete were 'open touring' cars that could seat at least four people, and they had to carry the driver and two passengers. Only cars in regular production could enter as specially designed racing cars were specifically banned.

In 1910, Vauxhall entered three cars for this event and, although they didn't win, Ferdinand Porsche actually took the trophy, all three cars managed to hit 65mph which, in 1911 with three people aboard, was quite creditable, and two of them got full marks for reliability. The publicity did Vauxhall no harm at all with their road cars starting to sell well as a result, and consequently these models have become known as Prince Henry Vauxhalls.

More trials success followed including the St Petersburg to Sebastopol Trial in 1911 and Czar Nicholas the Second was so impressed by the car that he ordered two of them. Vauxhall opened a sales and distribution centre in Moscow and benefited from a steady flow of sales in Russia until the 1918 revolution put a stop to all that.

Powered by a 3-litre, four-cylinder engine providing 40bhp, the overall design and quality of construction was excellent and it had a useful turn of speed, achieving up to 65mph which, at the time, made it a very fast car indeed. However, they were not cheap and really only available to the wealthy. As usual, Vauxhall sold just a rolling chassis, with the buyer free to commission their own four-seater bodywork from their favourite coachbuilder. Power was increased in 1913 with the arrival of the 4-litre engine, however war clouds started to gather the following year and production was halted in 1915, whilst Vauxhall concentrated on military contracts. Customer cars started to appear in 1919, with new models emerging every few months, and the Prince Henry cars soon became out of date and no longer relevant. It's not known with any degree of accuracy just how many Prince Henrys were built, but very few, no more than perhaps ten, have survived to this day.

Engine Number C10.2.

Strange as it may seem, this engine, C10.2, is the thread that runs through this entire story and has been at the centre of it for over 110 years.

As mentioned above, three special vehicles, each fitted with a modified 3-litre 20hp engine, were built by the Vauxhall Works Competition Group specifically for the 1910 Prince Henry Trial in Prussia and one of them was powered by C10.2. On return to the Vauxhall works, all three Prince Henry trial cars were soon re-bodied as single-seat racing cars to be run in the forthcoming O’Gorman Trophy at Brooklands in October that year. C10.2 was fitted to the car allocated to Vauxhall’s driver, Jock Hancock, and he duly won the White and Poppe Handicap Trophy. Later that month Hancock returned to Brooklands and broke the, highly coveted, half-mile record averaging over 100mph.

Early in 1911, Percy Kidner, Vauxhall’s MD, entered one car in the Imperial Russian Automobile Club’s Reliability Trial to be run between 17th and 25th September. His car was based on a standard A11 frame and fitted with one of the PH engines, 'the one that had been used at Brooklands' so presumably C10.2. The car was run again in early 1912 in the Great Winter Reliability Trial organised by the Royal Swedish Automobile Club and on this occasion the engine is documented as being C10.2. So it would appear that C10.2 had performed well in at least four of Vauxhall’s winning cars. Obviously, a bit like ‘Grandfather’s Axe’ the majority of its components would have been changed from time to time, however, it still remains identified as C10.2.

With the arrival in 1913 of Vauxhall’s Higginson 30-98 prototype engines at Luton, and their immediate successful motorsport involvement, the 20hp engines were no longer required and (almost) pensioned off.

Luckily, there was still a good degree of interest being shown in 20hp competition components by eager motorsport enthusiasts in Australia and New Zealand including Wally Scott in Christchurch NZ and H.V. (Hugh) McKay in Melbourne. It is now believed that the very successful industrialist and one of Australia’s wealthiest men at the time, McKay negotiated quietly with Luton to buy a hot, new-looking, PHV fitted with the old 100mph, record-breaking engine C10.2. His intention was to use the outwardly standard PHV, fitted with the highly modified C10.2 in competitive hill-climb events against friends and fellow competitors without actually disclosing the provenance of the non-standard racing engine installed in it (that doesn’t happen in motorsport, does it?!).

Australia

The story of Hugh McKay’s PHV and its early demise is well documented in the car’s simply massive history file but, briefly, it is thought that Hugh’s shiny new PHV, #A.11.517, arrived in Melbourne early in 1913 but he was too busy attempting to win a parliamentary seat in the 1913 Federal Election up until the end of May to think about motorsport. The car was used occasionally, whilst out electioneering, during the Winter (May to September) and it wasn’t until 13th September that #517 C10.2 made its competition debut at Wheeler’s Hill hillclimb. The result was decided on a handicap formula and McKay duly won the day, which was, as it turned out, C10.2’s last event anywhere, ever.

A couple of months later, on the afternoon of Monday 1st December 1913, Hugh McKay with his brother and his chauffeur were on a Sunshine Harvester Works (Hugh’s company) business trip and were running late trying to reach their destination by sunset. The chauffeur was relegated to the back seat whilst Hugh took the wheel and set off at speed. Two hours later, near Mangalore, on a long straight road C10.2 cried 'enough' and blew up and McKay lost control, running off the road and rolling over. No one was seriously injured but #517 sustained a bent front axle, damaged wheels, broken lights and windscreen, the body was twisted and the running boards damaged. Passers-by helped ‘hide’ the wreckage in a nearby Mangalore paddock (it was a new Vauxhall and as a Vauxhall dealer he didn't want potential customers think the cars might be unreliable). The remains of the car were collected a few days later and taken to a McKay rural property at Mount Macedon where it was stored, out of the rain, under a lean-to alongside a large hay shed. It was to remain there, quietly awaiting its fate, until its fate arrived in the form of the January 1939 ‘Black Friday Bushfires’ which swept through the property, totally destroying #517’s remaining timber and bodywork and leaving a pile of scrap iron and some aluminium panels. Quite soon after that, the Australian Government were promoting the community collection of scrap metal for the War effort and, fortuitously, the remains of #517 and the disgraced C10.2 were scooped up by a local, and later secured by the veteran and vintage car collector, Ivan Smith of Kyneton where they were to remain for the next 43 years.

The Resurrection

In 1980, Laurie Vinall, a long-standing member of the SCCSA, contacted a fellow member, 37-year old John Ellis, advising him that an auction of A.11 and Prince Henry Vauxhall parts was soon to take place. John leapt excitedly from his South Australian base across the state border to attend the auction of the Ivan Smith Vauxhall bits scheduled for Saturday, 2nd February 1980 in a small town called Kyneton, just 20-odd miles from the old barn at Mount Macedon. The parts were identified on a typed, pre-auction listing and the original copy of this is in the file. John Ellis was the highest bidder on all the parts but unfortunately did not meet the reserve, however two years later, in 1982, a deal was done and John was able to return to the auction site and collect everything and bring it home to South Australia marking the start of a further 43-years 'labour of love' which hopefully will culminate with #517 finding a new home at our Dawn of Motoring Sale in August.

Again, we only have space to touch on this, but the history file has a huge number of documents relating to the discovery and restoration of #517, including drawings, reverse engineering documents, many invoices, photographs, correspondence, hopes and frustrations during the 43-year journey to return #517 to the totally magnificent homage to the 1911 Russian Reliability Trials cars that you see today. Importantly the clutch plate numbered A11.517 identifying the car is fitted, and the collage (see photos) with the bent camshaft C10.2 that identifies the engine. We suggest that interested parties allow two or three hours to go through these files but it could take a bit longer- a 16-page document  'Prince Henry Vauxhall C10.2 A.11.517. A Strong Hypothesis for its Existence' explains the history of the car well, and is essential reading.

Perhaps the most important however, a letter from Vauxhall authority, Nic Portway, which confirms that 'John Ellis has the mortal remains of historic competition engine C10.2 and of Vauxhall car A.11.517'.