More About the Turner

Sir,
On several occasions I have contemplated writing to you about a forgotton make of car. However, someone has beaten me to the post, as it were, and they sent you the article on the Turner car, but I am still pleased to add to the information you received about this car.

Here is my story. Around the year 1911 my father, the late W.H. Lees-Hilton, purchased a new Turner car from the makers, the Turner Engineering Co., Wolverhampton. I have the photograph before me now and the registration number is quite plain—DB 846, the car being registered in Stockport. It was a sturdy 4-cylinder car and gave good service until after the outbreak of the 1914-18 War; the petrol restrictions caused my father to sell it.

The photograph shows a similar car to the one in your March issue, with certain exceptions. Our car had wooden-spoke wheels and incorporated a recent invention of that time called a Warland rim wheel, the original lamps were brass oil lamps, but we replaced these with acetylene lamps, two using gas from a generator on the running-board, and in winter two headlamps which were self-contained with the generator.

Also on the running-board was a clamp which could be used to take a spare 2-gallon tin of petrol; this was either Crown or Shell, the only brands available in those days—there were no pumps then. The front seat of the car could accommodate three people with a squeeze, and behind the front seat was a luggage. platform. This platform could be opened up and when the top was lifted it allowed a folding seat called a dickey-seat to rise from “the well beneath”. The engine was quite reliable; it was a 4-cylinder with magneto ignition. Although I was only about six years old when we bought the car, I can still remember the brass turn-switch on the dash which controlled the mag.; also I remember a glass window in the dash behind which were two cog wheels which when the engine oil was flowing it would turn the wheels round and act as a tell-tale.

Woodsmoor. H.L. Hilton