Day-Leeds

Day-Leeds was the automobile marque of Job Day & Sons Ltd, an established Leeds engineering and packaging-machinery concern based at Ellerby Lane. The company presented an experimental 8 HP cyclecar at Olympia in 1912 and period tables listed it in 1913. Its own air-cooled 999 cc V-twin sat transversely in a tubular front frame and drove through a cone clutch, three speeds and reverse to belt final drive. Despite advanced detachable wire wheels and a complete £120 equipment price, the design never entered serious production; photographed revisions are prototypes or configurations, not additional models. A more conventional 10 HP four-cylinder light car was shown late in 1913 and became the real Day-Leeds product from 1914. Early examples used a reported 1,130 cc Turner engine before Job Day introduced its own side-valve four, usually specified at 64 x 100 mm or approximately 1,287 cc. Postwar catalogs and survivors also give 1,266–1,267 cc, so capacity is treated as a powertrain phase or source conflict rather than separate nameplates. The 10 HP used a leather-faced cone clutch, three-speed gearbox with reverse and bevel/differential final drive. Lockwood & Clarkson supplied open two-seat bodies with dickey seats and closed coupés; electric lighting and an optional starter were advertised after the war. Period evidence shows cars offered during the First World War rather than a presumed hard hiatus. By 1924 reported output remained only ten to fourteen cars per month, and automobile manufacture ceased as Job Day returned to its core machinery business. An often-repeated 1926 endpoint is weaker than the 1924 agreement among AllCarIndex, Motor Sport and survivor history. Approximately 300 total cars is a secondary estimate without a ledger. Day-Leeds motorcycles, packaging machinery and a long-distance Australian postal evaluation of an ordinary light car remain outside the automobile model count. Two rows—the prototype/very-limited 8 HP Cyclecar and the production 10 HP Light Car—exhaust the defensible range.

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