The Autocarrier was the first commercial 3-wheeler produced by

AC Cars AC Cars, originally incorporated as Auto Carriers Ltd., is a British specialist automobile manufacturer and one of the oldest independent car makers founded in Britain. As a result of bad financial conditions over the years, the company was r ...

and it was the car that gave the company their name.

History

The Autocarrier was designed and manufactured by John Weller in 1908. It began its life as a three-wheeled delivery van, and it was not uncommon for a company to have a least one Autocarrier to be their delivery van.

Models

Later in 1908 AC started to change the layout of the Autocarrier and came up with some different models.

The Sociable

The AC Sociable was an adapted version of the Autocarrier. This new version was adapted to have a passenger seat in the front and that is where the car's name came from. The Sociable was also used by the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gur ...

because of their reliability and special bodywork was fitted so a

machine gun A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifl ...

could be fitted.

The Petite

The Petite wasn't manufactured until 1953 due to

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

and

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. The Petite was powered by a 346cc

2-stroke A two-stroke (or two-stroke cycle) engine is a type of internal combustion engine that completes a power cycle with two strokes (up and down movements) of the piston during one power cycle, this power cycle being completed in one revolution of t ...

Villers engine. The Petite was the most different from the other 3-wheeled cars made by AC because it had a roof whereas all of the other 3-wheeled cars didn't have a roof.

References

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History

Models

The Sociable

The Petite

References

See also