Tim Gosling considers whether the Thornycroft lorries of World War One were as good as Lord Kitchener claimed
‘Thornycroft had been making cars with petrol engines since 1902’
Four months before the end of World War One the Basingstoke-based company of Thornycroft distributed a 12-page booklet entitled ‘What Thornycroft motor vehicles have done from the army from 1899 to the present year’. With the end of the conflict approaching Thornycroft became increasingly aware that the large military contracts which had provided the company with so much business would dry up and it began to look towards a future civilian market.
It would not just be Thornycroft worrying about this, all vehicle manufacturers would be competing with each other to chase a diminishing market with further competition from the large numbers of surplus military trucks.
In order to steal a march on their competitors (many of whom were now claiming in adverts that their trucks were the ‘very best in war service’) Thornycroft launched a campaign to show exactly what the Company had been doing since 1899.
The origins of Thornycroft go back to 1862 when John Thornycroft designed and built a steam-powered car. Due to government legislation wh…
