Cubitt

Cubitt was the automobile marque of Cubitts’ Engineering Company Limited, built at Southern Works—usually called Great Southern Works—on Bicester Road in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. Its name and ancestry require two corrections commonly lost in abbreviated histories. The legal company used plural Cubitts with a possessive apostrophe, as confirmed by an original share certificate and official notices. Its industrial lineage ran through William Cubitt & Co. and the civil-engineering concern Holland & Hannen and Cubitts, not through Thomas Cubitt's separate London master-building and property business. Thomas, William and Lewis Cubitt had worked together early in the nineteenth century, but the brothers' partnership ended in 1827; William retained the Gray's Inn Road works and developed the engineering branch that Holland & Hannen acquired in 1883. That parent group's major construction and wartime-production experience—including work on National Aircraft Factory No. 1 at Waddon—helped make a mass-produced postwar car seem plausible, but neither the construction concern nor its aircraft work constitutes another Cubitt automobile marque. The proposed 16/20 hp car was publicly described in April 1919, before Cubitts’ Engineering Company Limited was registered on 27 May. The venture occupied the former James Putman RFC canvas, tent and hangar works on both sides of Bicester Road; later recollections often misspell the name Putnam. A prospectus followed, substantial Alfred Herbert machine tooling was installed, and at a September 1919 shareholders' meeting the chairman said production was underway. Those contemporary milestones establish 1919, rather than the frequently repeated 1920, as the start of Cubitt automobile production. Eric May served as managing director and Major P. L. H. Dodson as sales director, but the shareholder-financed, parent-backed origin makes it misleading to call either man the sole founder. Wright & Wright of Tring constructed the prototype and some early two- and four-seat bodies; Cubitt subsequently brought body production into the Aylesbury works. The launch car was a conventional but robust 16/20 hp family automobile with a 2,815 cc long-stroke four-cylinder engine, 80 x 140 mm bore and stroke, four-speed gearbox, inverted-cone clutch, open propeller shaft and worm-drive live rear axle. Its detachable pressed-steel disc wheels were a conspicuous feature. The engine was an L-head or side-valve design from the outset: a 1919 description placed all enclosed valves on one side, a detailed 1922 factory account explicitly called it L-head, and surviving-car descriptions agree. Later derivative references that make the early 16/20 overhead-valve and claim a 1924 or 1925 conversion to side valves are therefore incorrect. The original high chassis used semi-elliptic springs front and rear, battery-and-coil ignition, electric starting and lighting, and two independent brakes acting at the rear wheels. Early coachwork included a streamlined four-seater, conventional four- or five-seat tourers and some two-seaters. An initial £298 price and promoted fuel economy of about 25 mpg positioned it as a broadly accessible British family car. Costs quickly defeated that promise: the price rose to £342 in February 1920 and £442 by June. Publicity envisioned 5,000 cars a year, and some early promotion claimed capacity as high as 20,000, but neither figure represented actual output. Contemporary reports spoke of 50–60 cars weekly during 1920, while a 1922 retrospective said 1921 production never exceeded roughly 40 chassis a week. Cubitt reported a £13,340 profit for its first 15-month period and showed at the White City in 1920, but expensive plant, rising material costs and insufficient volume soon turned the venture into a persistent loss-maker. The chassis introduced late in 1921 was a material redesign rather than another body on the launch platform. A May 1922 technical examination records the same 2,815 cc L-head four and 126-inch wheelbase, but full cantilever rear springs, 54-inch track, 10½-inch clearance and approximately 2,600 lb complete weight. It retained four forward speeds and overhead-worm final drive. The contemporary article reports a 4.125:1 axle ratio; a later owner schedule assigns 4.5:1 to retrospective 1923 E/F types, so the catalog preserves the conflict instead of choosing a convenient hybrid. At the 1922 Olympia show, Cubitt's 1923 program comprised a £360 standard five-seater, £355 two-seater with dickey, roughly £490–£495 De Luxe five-seater and £595 all-weather model. Later 1923 offerings ranged from open tourers and an equipped five-seater to a limousine-saloon. The letters E and F appear retrospectively, but their meaning and dates conflict with a surviving 1922 car described as Model K; they are treated as body or order-code aliases, not inflated into mechanical models. Cubitt also offered a separately advertised Standard 15-cwt Van in October 1921. It combined the passenger-type chassis and side-valve four with a varnished three-ply wooden box body about 5 by 4 by 4 feet inside, carried roughly 762 kg, omitted the electric starter as standard and cost £450. Its defined payload and commercial body justify one light-van identity, but no evidence supports a larger Cubitt truck range. Eric May was killed when his car overturned in January 1922, depriving an already fragile enterprise of its managing director. Through 31 July 1921 the business had recorded a £79,368 gross loss. In March 1923 a creditor, Combined Sheet Metal and Coppersmithing Company, petitioned for winding up; proceedings were held over while a court-supervised reconstruction was attempted. The High Court ordered meetings of ordinary creditors, loan creditors, preference shareholders and ordinary shareholders in May, and the groups approved a scheme in June. The company then sought to reduce nominal capital from £600,000 to £249,728 6s because the extinguished capital was unrepresented by available assets; the court confirmed the reduction and it was registered in August. Period reporting placed Selwyn Francis Edge in negotiations to become managing director and said work could be transferred from AC because AC held more orders than it could economically handle. This does not establish the often-repeated story that Edge bought Cubitt in 1922, and the legal record documents no clean transfer of marque ownership. John Stewart Napier, formerly associated with Arrol-Johnston, joined the redesign and production effort; he was not D. Napier & Son, the maker of Napier cars. For 1924 Cubitt significantly lowered its 10-foot-wheelbase frame, enlarged and strengthened the crankshaft bearing area and retained the established side-valve 2.8-litre four. Period advertisements emphasized wide doors, sliding seats, easier access, low-pressure tyres and a revised radiator on the special tourer. Bodies included a two-seater whose dickey lid formed a V-shaped rear windscreen, four-door tourer, saloon, saloon-limousine and landaulette. A later schedule applies K, F, L and M letters, but does not demonstrate four different chassis and collides with the earlier Model K identity; the catalog therefore groups those letters as codes within one lowered 1924 generation. The final 1925 program did contain two demonstrably distinct chassis. The short K4 had a 10 ft 1 in wheelbase, 4.125:1 axle, 30 x 5.25 tyres and a £260 chassis price, while the long L4 used a 10 ft 7 in wheelbase, 4.7:1 gearing, 32 x 6.20 tyres and cost £275 as a chassis. Complete-car schedules list about £335 for the short form and £500–£525 for the long. Both retained the 2,815 cc L-head engine but added aluminium pistons, lighter connecting rods, a revised lower chassis and radiator, an underslung-worm axle and long semi-elliptic rear springs. These dimensional, gearing, tyre and price distinctions justify separate K4 and L4 rows; saloon, limousine, landaulette, touring and dickey-seat bodies remain variants rather than additional models. Financial reconstruction did not save the company. Earl of Dudley's Round Oak Works Limited petitioned on 10 June 1925, and the High Court issued a compulsory winding-up order on 23 June. The liquidation was not voluntary. In August the Official Receiver said achieved output could not carry production and establishment overhead, cited the market's turn toward lower tax-horsepower cars, and reported aggregate net losses of £420,026 apart from the early profit, aggravated by inadequate working capital. Automobile manufacture ended in 1925. The legal shell survived liquidation: approximately 31½ acres, extensive factory buildings and 36 cottages were advertised for auction in February 1927; the receiver was released in February 1930; and Cubitts’ Engineering Company Limited was finally struck off and legally dissolved on 31 January 1933. The site's later owners and occupants have no marque continuity. Approximately 3,000 Cubitt vehicles is the most defensible production estimate. A later owners' register found about 13 known vehicle identities, including incomplete and unrestored examples, and an apparent chassis span from 701 to K3863. Continuous numbering would imply roughly 3,162 identities, which supports the traditional estimate but cannot prove that every number represented a completed car. Older claims of five or six survivors generally count only known complete vehicles, while a 1921 press claim approaching 4,000 and later claims of 5,000 completed cars conflict with the receiver's evidence of chronically inadequate output. No honest allocation by generation or body style is possible. The resulting catalog contains six road-vehicle identities: three successive 16/20 or 16 hp generations for 1919–21, 1922–23 and 1924; the distinct short K4 and long L4 of 1925; and the 1921 Standard 15-cwt Van. Cubitt's Cupid was a radiator mascot, not a model, and an uncorroborated C1 Tourer label is excluded. Cubitt-built bodies for Alvis 10/30 and 12/40 cars remain Alvis; AC vehicles or engines handled in reconstruction work remain AC; the Cubitt Car Distributing Company was a separate concessionaire rather than another manufacturer; and Holland & Hannen and Cubitts, National Aircraft Factory No. 1, later spare-parts suppliers and later factory occupants do not become Cubitt automotive successors. No substantiated successor marque continued after the 1925 end of production.

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