Gordon England (coachbuilder)

E. C. Gordon England, after beginning an engineering apprenticeship with Great Northern Railway in Doncaster, changed to aviation and went on to pilot and design both gliders and powered aircraft and was works manager[citation needed] at Bristol Aeroplane Company during World War I.

After the war his interest turned to motor racing and in 1922 he obtained a chassis version of the new Austin 7 which he tuned and entered successfully at several events.

He believed that car performance was being held back by the heavy coachwork being fitted to many models and set about designing bodies largely of plywood covered with fabric and fixed to the chassis with three rubber mountings.

Gordon England took four years to develop his own construction technique using a solid plywood shell without Weymann's skeletal frame.

The Putney premises were outgrown and in 1927 the company moved to Wembley and exhibited at the London Olympia Motor Show with an Invicta on the stand.