Invicta (car)

Assembly took place in Macklin's garage at his home at Fairmile Cottage on the main London to Portsmouth road in Cobham, Surrey.

With the assistance of William (Willie) Watson, his mechanic from pre-World War I racing days,[3] a prototype was built on a Bayliss-Thomas frame with Coventry Simplex engine in the stables of Macklin's house on the western side of Cobham.

The first production car, the 1925 2½ litre used a Meadows straight six, overhead-valve engine and four-speed gearbox in a chassis with semi elliptical springs all round and cost from £595.

As demand grew a lot of the construction work went to Lenaerts and Dolphens in Barnes, London but final assembly and test remained at Fairmile.

In March 1926 Cordery was part of a team of six drivers that set multiple long distance records at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in Italy.

[6] In July 1926 at the Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry track, Paris, they covered 5000 miles at 70.7 mph, taking over 70 hours of day and night driving, supervised by the Royal Automobile Club.

Cordery was twice awarded the Dewar Trophy, latterly in 1929 for driving 30,000 miles (48,000 km) in 30,000 minutes (20.8 days) at Brooklands, averaging 61.57 mph.

[6] In 1930 Donald Healey gained a class win in the Monte Carlo Rally, and won the event outright in 1931 with an S Type, having started from Stavanger.

[10] The name was revived in 1946 by an organisation calling themselves Invicta Cars of Virginia Water Surrey[11] who began making the Black Prince.

The aluminium-bodied cars – steel supplies were effectively non-existent for new businesses in Britain's new centrally planned economy – were extremely complex and very expensive with a torque converter (Brockhouse Hydro-Kinetic Turbo Transmitter) entirely replacing the gearbox.

Other innovative luxury items included a trickle-charger to charge the battery from the domestic mains, an immersion heater in the engine, interior heating of the body and a built-in radio.