British

Today in Motorcycle History

GN Cyclecars

Manufactured by Henry Ronald Godfrey and Archibald Frazer-Nash from 1910 to 1914, and then by British Gregoire of Wandsworth until about 1925. The GN was built under licence by Société des Moteurs Salmson in Billancourt, France from 1920.

Nash and Godfrey hated cogs,
Built a car with chains-and-dogs.
And it works—but would it, if
They had made it with a diff?
~ William Boddy

Archibald Frazer-Nash

Archibald Goodman Frazer Nash was an early English manufacturer of cyclecars and sports cars in England. He was born in India on June 30, 1889 and died on March 10, 1965.

In 1910, he partnered with Henry Ronald Godfrey to produce the GN cycle car, a two-cylinder light car, first sold in 1911, which stayed in production through 1922.

In 1923 he started the Frazer-Nash company to produce an evolution of the GN, which became the Frazer Nash car. Frazer Nash was reconstituted as AFN Ltd. in 1927.

The new company was taken over by H. J. ("Aldy" or "HJ") Aldington in 1929. At the same time Archie Frazer Nash resigned from any management role although he remained a shareholder.

In 1929, he started a separate engineering company, Nash and Thomson which designed a very successful machine-gun turret, the Frazer-Nash hydraulic aircraft turret, for WWII British bombers.

Archie changed his name from "Frazer Nash" to "Frazer-Nash" (with hyphen) in 1938, so both forms are correct, depending on the reference period.


Sources: Graces Guide, simanaitissays.com.


04-May-2019

steamflyer59 at yahoo.com
I would like to purchase a copy of the book from which your articles on the Olympia are from for my library collection.
Can you help me with this?
.....

Thanks for your timely reply and thanks for the info about the Boston Library Collection source.
To what should I refer to in order to digitally peruse this particular book?
I am a student of motorcycle history and I am surprised that there doesn't seem to be a work on the subject of the pioneer and vintage era motorcycle industry trade & public shows .
I really appreciate the work that you do as I have landed on your site repeatedly.
I am very interested also in cyclecars and have read your articles on this subject as well .
I have noticed that you show photos of the GN cyclecar's mechanical anatomy. Views of the car's frame and drive train suspension etc.
Where can I get digital copies of these as I am contemplating building a 1/8 accurate scale model of this cyclecar.

Angelo Capodiferro
9 Willow Street, Wallingford , Ct. , 06492


The magazines may be downloaded in digital format from the Boston Library collection.
As far as I know there is no specific work on motorcycle trade fairs.
Have no further info on the GN at present. Suggest you download the text files for the relevant years from the links provided, then search through those.