Inconsistent history

Sir,

At the recent Veteran and Vintage drive into Europe I re-encountered the Horstman(n?) Super Sports which I found interesting enough to look up in my meagre reference library when I got home. I am now confused! The programme for the “Drive into Europe” says the car I saw is a 1921 version whereas there is a picture of the same car (the same picture!) in Georgano’s “Encyclopaedia of Motor Cars” which says it is a 1923 model.

This is perhaps an all too common sort of occurrence for comment but in the “Vintage Motor Car Pocketbook” Messrs. Clutton, Bird and Harding say “Horstmen” were “the first British car to have hydraulic brakes”. However an Automotive Products advertisement in the aforementioned programme states that “The 1925 Triumph Light 15 was the first British car to he fitted with hydraulic brakes.”

The “Encyclopaedia” seems quite impartial on this matter. The Horstmann section by T. R. Nicholson says “the 1925 production cars . . . were the first British light cars to have Lockheed hydraulic four-wheel brakes” whereas the Triumph section by Michael Sedgwick says that the 1925 13/30 was “the first British car to have Lockheed contracting-type hydraulic brakes”.

In “Car Facts and Feats” Michael Sedgwick says of hydraulic four-wheel brakes, “First British use was on 1925 models of Horstman and Triumph”!

Which was the first British car to have hydraulic brakes?

Hornchurch.
W. Grigg.
[Perhaps MOTOR SPORT’s “Fragments on Forgotten Makes” on Horstman will help? —ED.