Allard, better known for light sports cars, produced a pilot run of around twenty

fibreglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass ( Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass c ...

-bodied three-wheeled Clipper

microcar Microcar is a term often used for the smallest size of cars, with three or four wheels and often an engine smaller than . Specific types of microcars include bubble cars, cycle cars, invacar, quadricycles and voiturettes. Microcars are ofte ...

s in 1953–54. The rear-mounted Villiers 24B single-cylinder two-stroke motorcycle engine is connected by triple 'V' belt drive to a

Burman Burman is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Anneli Burman (born 1963), Swedish curler *Barney Burman, American make-up artist *Barry Burman (1943–2001), English figurative artist *Ben Lucien Burman (1896–1984), American aut ...

gearbox which drives the rear left wheel via chain. Suspension is trailing arm using an Andre Neihart rubber mounting design. The car was designed by David Gottlieb of Power Drive Ltd and advertised as having an "indestructible" plastic body, made by Hordern-Richmond Ltd; the Clipper was the first car to have a colour-impregnated

body. It seats three adults on a bench seat and two children in optional

dickey seat A rumble seat (American English), dicky (dickie/dickey) seat (British English), also called a mother-in-law seat, is an upholstered exterior front-facing seat which is folded into the rear of a Coach (carriage), coach, carriage, or early motorcar. ...

s revealed when the rear boot is opened. Access to the bench seat is via a single door on the nearside, with the driver having to slide across to reach his place. The Clipper's lightweight body and small engine contributed to its weight of just , with a claimed fuel consumption of . It was priced at £268 (equivalent to £ in ), although it never reached the production stage.

Project cancellation

The Clipper was intended to be sold in volume through motorcycle dealerships, to compete with the

Bond Minicar Bond Minicar is a series of economical three-wheeled microcars which were manufactured by the British car manufacturer Sharp's Commercials Ltd (the company was renamed Bond Cars Limited in 1964), in Preston, Lancashire, between 1949 and 1966. ...

. After testing a prototype against two other UK three wheelers, a Bond and an AC Petite, an agreement was made with Encon Motors to manufacture the Clipper at their workshop in

Fulham Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies in a loop on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea, London, Chelsea ...

. Production problems with the fibreglass body required new moulds to be made, which incurred additional costs which could not be agreed, and the project was cancelled in 1954. Cooling difficulties and driveshaft weakness made the Clipper very unreliable, to the extent that motoring writer Giles Chapman rated the car at No. 1 in his list of the top ten most unreliable cars in ''The Worst Cars Ever Sold''. As of 2001 there were three survivors, only one of which was in relatively good condition.

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

* *

External links

Allard Owners Club page on the Clipper
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201034230/http://www.allardownersclub.org/wordpress/?page_id=960 , date=1 December 2017
Information and photographs about the manufacture of the Clipper by Margaret Woolsey, one of the team involved with the car's production
Microcars Three-wheeled motor vehicles

Clipper A clipper was a type of mid-19th-century merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed. The term was also retrospectively applied to the Baltimore clipper, which originated in the late 18th century. Clippers were generally narrow for their len ...