The Leyland Eight

Sir,

Your excellent articles on the Leyland Eight remind me that, as a boy, I was in Bowness-on-Windermere when Parry Thomas brought the prototype there for testing. He stayed in the Old England Hotel, and the car was housed in the hotel garage. To me, the most memorable things were the awesome length of the bonnet and the fact that it took two men to swing the engine into life. When Parry Thomas returned from a run up Kirkstone Pass, we heard that the car had done this at some terrific speed in 3rd gear.

At that time (1919-21) my father had an American car called a Scripps Booth. It was quite an attractive-looking tourer with wire wheels, and a relatively small-capacity engine. Here, memory is of persistent oiling-up of a plug in one cylinder which no one, I think, ever cured. The Edinburgh suppliers’ telegraphic address was “Satisfaction, Edinburgh”; a misnomer if ever there was one!

Richmond R. D. Bell

(Lt. Col. RAMC Retd.)