Adamson

Adamson was the Enfield, Middlesex cyclecar identity developed by designer Reginald Barton Adamson at the premises of his family's haulage business. The first 1912 car was a low, bull-nosed open two-seater on a channel-section steel chassis placed under the axles. Buyers could choose an Alpha-built 1,099 cc twin-cylinder or 1,074 cc four-cylinder engine; a three-speed-and-reverse gearbox drove a countershaft and twin V-belts to the rear wheels. Semi-elliptic springs and a mechanical starting linkage were distinctive practical details. A larger four-cylinder option was added in 1914. A 1,330 cc four-cylinder car was announced in 1916, but few if any reached customers before wartime conditions ended the first phase of production. After the war a newly formed R. Barton Adamson and Co. resurrected the four-cylinder design with Coventry-Simplex power. It remained a very expensive lightweight car for its class—£375 in 1920, falling to £210 by 1924—and no reliable output ledger survives. The final Adamson vehicles, appearing from 1923, were called Twin-Cars: two sidecar-like passenger units arranged side by side, with the driver on the off side and a 9 HP 1,078 cc V-twin Anzani mounted between them. Air- or water-cooled versions and chain drive were reported, but no model-level quantities are known. The Twin-Car is structurally distinct from the earlier two-seat cyclecar and therefore receives its own row. Adamson's 1912–25 company span includes unbuilt or interrupted development; it does not prove uninterrupted availability of every engine option. No successor marque is documented, and the later Austin 7 comparison is context rather than a corporate relationship.

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