Crayford Engineering (more commonly known simply as Crayford) was an

automobile A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, peopl ...

coachbuilder A coachbuilder manufactures bodies for passenger-carrying vehicles. The trade of producing coachwork began with bodies for horse-drawn vehicles. Today it includes custom automobiles, buses, Coach (bus), motor coaches, and passenger car (rai ...

based in

Westerham Westerham is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Sevenoaks District of Kent, England. It is located 3.4 miles east of Oxted and 6 miles west of Sevenoaks, adjacent to the Kent border with both Greater London and Surrey. I ...

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

, England and formed in 1962 by Jeffrey Smith (engineer and designer) and David McMullan, (sales). In the 1970s, a subdivision within the company, called Crayford Auto Developments, Ltd., was established for automobiles. The company specialized in converting European

coupés A coupe or coupé (, ) is a passenger car with a sloping or truncated rear roofline and typically with two doors. The term ''coupé'' was first applied to horse-drawn carriages for two passengers without rear-facing seats. It comes from the Fr ...

and

saloons Saloon may refer to: Buildings and businesses * One of the bars in a traditional British pub * An alternative name for a bar (establishment) * Western saloon, a historical style of American bar * The Saloon, a bar and music venue in San Francis ...

into

convertible A convertible or cabriolet () is a Car, passenger car that can be driven with or without a roof in place. The methods of retracting and storing the roof vary across eras and manufacturers. A convertible car's design allows an open-air drivin ...

s and estates. Notable products included the convertible

Mini The Mini is a very small two-door, four-seat car, produced for four decades over a single generation, with many names and variants, by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and its successors British Leyland and the Rover Group, and finally ...

, BMC 1100/1300 convertible, convertible Corsair, Cabriolet Corsair, Cabriolet

Capri Capri ( , ; ) is an island located in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrento Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. A popular resort destination since the time of the Roman Republic, its natural beauty ...

, the rare

Triumph TR7 The Triumph TR7 is a sports car that was manufactured in the United Kingdom from September 1974 to October 1981 by British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC), which changed its name to British Leyland (BL) in 1975. The car was launched in the Uni ...

Tracer Estate, and a Princess hatchback conversion, a commonly accepted principle for a car that appeared to be, but was not, a hatchback to begin with. Other lesser-known conversions from Crayford included the Tempest, a convertible

Volkswagen Scirocco The Volkswagen Scirocco is a three-door, front-engine, front-wheel-drive, sport compact hatchback manufactured and marketed by Volkswagen in two generations from 1974 to 1992 and a third generation from 2008 until 2018. Production ended without a ...

, a

Ford Cortina The Ford Cortina is a medium-sized family car manufactured in various body styles from 1962 to 1982. It was the United Kingdom's best-selling car of the 1970s. The Cortina was produced in five generations (Mark I through to Mark V, although of ...

Mk V Convertible, and a Mercedes S-Class Estate. In 1966 the company converted, for the Heinz food company, 57 Wolseley Hornet Mini-derived cars to convertibles, to be given as prizes in a competition. The cars designed and created by Jeffrey Smith were featured in the Olympic Closing Ceremony in London 2012. Crayford also did a series of Ford convertibles, including the Cortina Mk I, Cortina Mk II, Cortina Cabriolet Mk2 and Corsair Convertible, Corsair Cabriolet and Capri Cabriolet. A number of

Mercedes-Benz W116 The Mercedes-Benz W116 is a series of flagship luxury sedans produced from September 1972 until 1980. The W116 automobiles were the first Mercedes-Benz models to be officially called S-Class, although some earlier sedan models had already been ...

s were converted to station wagons by Crayford. Most of the conversion body parts and glass used came from the contemporary

Ford Granada Ford Granada was a name used by the Ford Motor Company for two unrelated vehicles sold in different markets: * Ford Granada (Europe), built and marketed in Europe from 1972 to 1994 * Ford Granada (North America) The North American version of the ...

References

External links

The converters: Crayford Engineering
– includes a list of Crayford's conversions of Austin, Morris, MG, Rover, and Triumph cars.
1980 Crayford Tempest
– a convertible Volkswagen Scirocco
Crayford Convertible Car Club
– official site Coachbuilders of the United Kingdom Companies based in Kent 1962 establishments in England {{manufacturing-company-stub