Driving back in time...

The 1926 Arab

After this year’s VSCC Welsh Trial, Brian Demaus allowed me to fulfil a long-standing ambition, that of driving his very rare 1926 Arab which his son Robert had driven up from Sussex for the previous day’s driving tests and in which he returned home on the Monday — proving it to be a practical vintage sports car. There is, as far as I know, only one other Arab in this country, from the very small output from creator Reid Railton’s Letchworth factory, and that resides in the Stratford Motor Museum, whereas, as just described, the father and son Demons use theirs on the road.

They bought the car some years ago through a Motor Sport advertisement but on the run home it blew up in a very expensive way and was subsequently found to be generally in very poor condition. However, they had a unique motor car. The four-cylinder engine, of 70 x 127 mm (1,960 cc), was rumoured to have been based on a design laid down by J. G. Parry Thomas as a suitable power unit for high speed delivery vans and the like. It has a two-bearing crankshaft and Thomas-type valve gear, the single overhead camshaft operating valves inclined at 90 degrees through long rockers, one cam sufficing for each pair of valves, which are closed by leaf springs. When Thomas was designing his luxury Leyland Eight and other engines he was aware that normal coiled valve springs were apt to lose their temper if subjected to heat, when they would be unable to quell valve bounce and would eventually break. He therefore used leaf springs to obviate such problems and to provide progressive damping. Cost would not have troubled Thomas, but I understand there was a snag. Apparently the ends of the main spring leaves rubbed on the valve collets, causing them to wear, which could lead to valves departing into the cylinders…

Demaus’ engine is the Railton preprototype that was used in the racing SR (for Spurrier-Railton, Henry Spurrier being in charge of Leyland Motors at the time), with 10 / 20 hp Enfield AlIday chassis, which Rai1ton raced at Brooklands, lapping at 92.57 mph during the 1924 Easter Meeting. The SR was sold in 1925 to Kenneth Parker, who raced it, and his 12 / 50 Alvis, at Southport. Chris Shorrock then had it as a 21st birthday present, he and his brother continuing to run it in sand races at Southport from 1926. Soames, a Leyland apprentice, had the SR next, it went back to Rai1ton at T&Ts, then another Leyland apprentice, Fergus Clampett, put the SR’s engine into the Demaus Super Sports Arab in 1936, keeping it until 1940. Someone unknown put the existing body on it. This has a single door on the near-side, the external handbrake being on the off-side; the door-pocket flaps are inscribed with the name “Arab”.

My drive was necessarily brief but I was able to glean some interesting impressions about this rare Arab. It runs unexpectedly quietly, apart from a little tappet noise, both as to engine and gearbox. The gear lever is inside the body on the right, in a man-sized gate with very wide slots, the gear positions reminiscent of those of a vintage Vauxhall, ie, first and second are to the right, outboard of third and top, with reverse, guarded by a lift-up catch, beyond second. The stubby lever operates a very easy change, but there is an unfortunately wide gap between the third gear and top-gear ratios. The drop from third to second goes in especially nicely, but the clutch bites only at the end of the pedal travel, giving the impression that it is fierce on first acquaintance, which it is not. The accelerator is on the right, with something slightly “Leyland Eight” about it, or so I thought.

The Arab rides quite softly for a car of this vintage, the chassis is somewhat flexible, the cable brakes notably effective. The engine has a Marelli magneto and a Claudel-Hobson carburetter with one main jet coming in after the other under progressive throttle opening. There is a feeling that perhaps these “gas-works” tend to throttle the power output, as in its day the Arab was good for some 90 mph and was reputed to be able to sec off 3-litre Bentleys and other cars of that calibre. But at least it gives around 26 mpg, at a useful 60 to 70 mph cruising speed. Unlike the Leyland Eight, the Arab’s overhead camshaft is driven by a long chain in an impressively large casing, instead of by Thomas’ silent triple-eccentrics.

The fascia is devoid of speedometer and tachometer but contains some nice brass-bound dials and clock, the oil gauge being the one the driver need worry about. There is the ever-present thought that engine spares are virtually non-existent, which curbs any desire to rev hard, although something like 3,500 to 4,000 rpm is in order. The gearbox and back axle are less fraught, as these are Moss products. The steering is light and sensibly geared, but the car’s present custodian, Robert Demaus, says the handling took some time to get used to.

It was he who did all the later restoration work, including re-fabricking the body, repainting the car, re-upholstering and re-trimming it, and also making up a new dashboard with period if not original instruments. He also coped successfully with the task of ironing out the inevitable snags that arise between the major strip-down his father had undertaken and getting the Arab back on the road. The former was done for Demaus by Ron Footitt, who used slightly modified high compression pistons from an Arid Red Hunter motorcycle and slightly altered valves intended for the 1956 / ’58 P-series Plymouth car. The camshaft was so tired that no profile could be ascertained, so Ken Fantom designed new ones based on a theoretical 95 mph at 4,500 rpm, after which Leonard Reece made up a new set of cams.

It is nice that John Parker was re-united with it at this year’s Brooklands Re-Union; he was the first of a series of Leyland premium apprentices to own the car after Clampett but he hadn’t seen it since before the war, when he had sighted it untaxed, tyres flat, and filthy dirty, in a Manchester side street. (Incidentally, Soames must surely have been the Leyland apprentice who regaled Motor Sport’s readers with his experiences with a very hairy Morgan 3-wheeler many years ago?) Brian Denial’s is of the opinion that his car, No 5, was assembled at Brooklands by T & T’s after the Letchworth factory had closed down, which its Surrey registration bears out, and that it was the first of the low-chassis Arabs to be built; the engine castings date back to 1923. The Stratford Museum low-chassis Arab has the next chassis number, but there are many detail differences. — W.B.