Carlton Carriage Company
The Carlton Carriage Company were an English coachbuilder based in Willesden, North London.
Originally formed as E.B. Hall & Co,[1] they moved from making horse-drawn carriages to making custom car bodies commissioned directly by customers on chassis supplied by various manufacturers, including Bentley, Daimler and Rolls-Royce. The company name changed after they were licensed to produce Weymann Fabric Bodies.
In 1939, Winston Churchill commissioned Carlton to build a drophead coupe on a Daimler DB18 chassis. Never used until post-World War II, he used it to campaign both the 1944 and 1948 general elections.[2]
The company ended operations in 1965.[3]
References
- ↑ "Carlton Carriage Co". Grace's Guide. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
- ↑ Chris Knapman (9 Nov 2010). "Winston Churchill Daimler to be auctioned". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
- ↑ Beattie, Ian (1977). "Part 2 Coachbuilders and their work". The Complete Book of Automobile Body Design. Yeovil, UK: The Haynes Publishing Group. p. 76. ISBN 0854292179.
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The Carlton Carriage Company built eleven, possibly twelve individual bodies on the superb "Silent Sports Car" Bentley Chassis between 1934 and 1939.
Most are well documented and have been photographed and recorded many times. The most elusive Carlton bodied Bentley, and possibly the most elusive Derby Bentley of them all, is B193GP, a 4.25 litre drophead of 1936 which has survived, and was sold by the Real Car Company from their north Wales base in 2001. Since then the car has disappeared again, but it is still in existence and still has its original body. This car has been wrongly identified and described in several publications, and this confusion has added to the mystique that surrounds this car.