Seddon Atkinson
The real and effective beginning of the company was in 1907, when the partners decided to capitalise on the need for local engineers to make temporary or permanent repairs to the increasing number of 'pullcars' and private motor vehicles on the road.
In the same year a second, smaller repair centre was opened in Freemason's Row, Liverpool, to cater for the enormous volume of steam traffic using the docks.
Very soon the company made something of a name for itself in the north of England as quality repairers, and the growing number of operators brought new business from far and wide.
Some method of local delivery and collection was needed to supplement the services of the railway companies, and with most of the existing steam wagon manufacturers turning their resources over to munitions production, demand increased further.
The market enjoyed a short boom period following the Armistice and the Atkinsons, realising the potential, purchased a five-acre site of land near their homes in Frenchwood, on which they intended to erect a new and enlarged factory, solely designed for the production of steam wagons.
By 1918 the Atkinsons had built up a competent team of engineers and salesmen as well as an enthusiastic and loyal labour force, and were producing wagons competitive in both price and performance.
There seems to have been various family rivalries at the time and the firm was undoubtedly in difficulties when Edward Atkinson decided to seek help from mine engineers and Pagefield lorry makers, Walker Brothers of Wigan.
The production philosophy was similar to that of Seddon, ERF, Rutland (Motor Traction) and other competitors aiming for value-for-money lorry sales, viz: the assembly of tried and tested proprietary components.
A small number of left-hand-drive Atkinsons were built for export to mainland Europe in the late 1960s, with pressed-steel cabs bought from Krupp after that company had ceased commercial vehicle production.
A different design of glass-fibre cab, launched in prototype form at the 1966 Commercial Motor Show, and named View-Line, had a deep single-piece main windscreen with wrap-around quarter glasses.
From 1968 the standard Mk I glass-fibre clad cab was revised, with stronger ash framing, larger dimensions and wider, deeper windscreens.
The traditional Withnell-tubed, exposed radiator was replaced with the more imposing concealed version, which was fitted behind a glass-fibre shrouded metal grille - again carrying the Knight's Head, circular A logo and additional adornments in the form of engine manufacturer plates.
This cab featured on the final Atkinson haulage models, announced at the Commercial Motor Show at Earls Court in October 1970, the naming of which originated from an idea by Frank Whalley, the company publicity officer at the time.
After acquisition by Killingbeck, it was stretched into a 6x2 'Chinese Six' tractor and fitted with an uprated Gardner 6LXB engine to enable it to meet the legal requirement for 6 bhp/ton after 1973, whereupon the well-known Atkinson enthusiast and archivist, Michael Deuchars, named it 'Buccaneer'.
After the North Western's last Bristols were delivered in 1950, the company took Leyland Titans and Royal Tigers for a year or so, but the heavy weight, high fuel consumption, poor braking performance and high purchase cost of the Royal Tiger led North Western's management to seek an equivalent to the nationalised sector's Bristol LS bus, with lightweight construction and a Gardner engine horizontally oriented and mounted underfloor.
[7] The Alpha range featured a horizontal Gardner engine (four, five and six-cylinder versions were offered), a choice of constant mesh and synchromesh gearboxes from David Brown, and either a lightweight or medium-weight frame.
As events turned out, after the initial two batches for North Western in 1953/54 – the first of which were rare rear-entrance underfloor-engined buses – the senior management of the BET group removed Atkinson, Guy and Daimler from their list of preferred suppliers.
Atkinson's management then decided that although Daimler and Guy were publicly offering Gardner-engined double-deckers, and some influential (mainly Scottish) customers could purchase AEC Regents with that make of engine, they would also enter this market.
This bus (UMA370) is preserved by the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester and is also of interest as the first double-deck bus with an electrically controlled direct-acting epicyclic gearbox, this Self-Changing Gears (SCG) unit was fitted by Atkinson after delivery but before entry into service as the SHMD board's drivers (who were used to pre-selective transmissions on the fleets' standard Daimlers) did not want to use the originally installed David Brown constant-mesh unit.
The 41 seats were well-shaped and well padded and the wide double-stream entrance-exit just aft of the front wheels was covered by four-leaf double jack-knife doors.
Shortly afterwards a frustrated export chassis, to a shorter wheelbase and 27 ft 6in overall length, was bodied by Plaxton to its then-new Highway outline at the orders of a Wakefield dealer, Comberhill Motors who registered it as NHL127 and sold it to Simpson of Rosehearty.
After North Western were discouraged by the British Electric Traction group from purchasing Atkinson Alphas the company sought sales in the independent market, producing lightweight bus and coach demonstrators.
Relaxation of legally allowed length and widths resulted in further suffix letters: The first two Sunderland buses were L644LWs (lightweight frame, six tons, four wheels, 4LW engines, long wheelbases, wide-track).
The final three Alphas were coded PM746HL, viz: passenger, medium-weight frame, six-tonne payload, four wheels, Gardner 6HLW engine, long wheelbase.
Coachbuilders for these chassis included Plaxton and a number of smaller concerns, Seddon also built their own coachwork for these models, mainly for export.
Although Bedford were to have success with such a layout between 1970 and 1987 the marks 10 and 11 sold poorly, with Seddon, Charles H Roe, Duple and Plaxton bodies on the few known examples.
But following the success of the Ford R-Series and the Bedford VAL and VAM, Seddon decided to make a similar product, to a variety of wheelbases with Perkins engines; as on the competitors, these were vertically mounted on the front platform.
[14] A rear-engined derivative was the Mark 5 (only one sold in the UK, a 45-seat Van Hool coach) and a version with a turbocharged Perkins 6-cylinder engine mounted at the front but under the passenger floor was the Pennine 6.
In 1984, International Harvester sold Seddon Atkinson to Enasa of Spain, to make up for a planned Spanish I-H engine factory which had failed to materialize.
[20] In 1988 the Strato range was launched, replacing the 401, using S-A's chassis combined with the more modern Pegaso cab from parent company Enasa (itself based on the DAF 95).
