The Leyland Eight or Straight Eight was a luxury

car A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people rather than cargo. There are around one billio ...

produced by

Leyland Motors Leyland Motors Limited (later known as the Leyland Motor Corporation) was an English vehicle manufacturer of lorries, buses and trolleybuses. The company diversified into car manufacturing with its acquisitions of Triumph and Rover in 1960 a ...

from 1920 to 1923. The car was designed by the chief engineer of Leyland Motors, J.G. Parry-Thomas and his assistant Reid Railton, and was intended to be the finest car available. It was the first British car with a

straight-eight engine The straight-eight engine or inline-eight engine (often abbreviated as I8) is an eight-cylinder internal combustion engine with all eight cylinders mounted in a straight line along the crankcase. The type has been produced in side-valve, IO ...

and Leyland managing director Henry Spurrier II (d.1942) told the company's board that it was better than a Rolls-Royce in every respect. The Eight was introduced to the public at the 1920 International Motor Exhibition at Olympia, London, where it was referred to as the "Lion of Olympia".

Engine and transmission

The engine, with cylinder block and upper crankcase cast in one piece, had a single centrally mounted

overhead camshaft An overhead camshaft (OHC) engine is a piston engine in which the camshaft is located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier overhead valve engines (OHV), where the camshaft is located below the combustio ...

hemispherical combustion chamber A hemispherical combustion chamber is a combustion chamber in the cylinder head of an internal combustion engine with a domed "sphere, hemispheric" shape. An engine featuring this type of hemispherical chamber is known as a hemi engine. In pra ...

s, and an bore. The engine was offered in one of two capacities: with a stroke, producing at 2,500 rpm or with a stroke and twin carburettors, producing at 3,500 rpm. The crankshaft ran in five bearings. Ignition was by coil and distributor rather than magneto which was the more usual British practice at the time. Transmission was through a single plate clutch to a separately mounted four speed gearbox. The rear axle was unconventional with the differential mounted ahead of the axle. The spiral bevel crown wheel and pinion arrangement had two crown wheels each attached to a half shaft allowing them to be arranged at an angle to each other to give the rear wheels a positive camber.

Chassis and suspension

The channel section chassis had suspension by leaf springs at the front and a mix of leaf springs and torsion bars at the rear. At the front semi-elliptical springs were used with radius arms controlling fore and aft movement of the axle. The radius arms were joined by a torsion bar across the front of the chassis to act as an

anti-roll bar An anti-roll bar (roll bar, anti-sway bar, sway bar, stabilizer bar) is an automobile suspension part that helps reduce the body roll of a vehicle during fast cornering or over road irregularities. It links opposite front or rear wheels to a t ...

. At the rear the quarter-elliptical springs had their front ends mounted in a boss that was attached to a short transverse torsion bar which controlled the rotation of the boss making the suspension a hybrid arrangement. As at the front linked radius rods provided axle location and anti-roll properties. The brakes, with vacuum servo assistance, were on the rear wheels only.

Coachwork

Factory-made bodies were available in open tourer style with either two or five seats and chassis were also supplied to customers for their choice of coachbuilders which included Vanden Plas and Windovers.

Production and sales

The car was very expensive; the chassis for delivery to a coachbuilder costing £2,500 in 1920 reducing to £1,875 in 1922. Since Leyland was severely short of cash due to other problems, Spurrier reduced the launch production target to one hundred; by 1923, the car was produced only for firm orders, which were discouraged. In the end, only about 18 were made. It was the most expensive British car of its day. Today, the only example known to exist, a Leyland-Thomas, is one assembled from spares in 1929 and in the collection of the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust (BMIHT) and displayed in the

British Motor Museum The British Motor Museum in Gaydon, Warwickshire, England holds the world's largest collection of historic British cars, with over 300 cars on display from the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust and the Jaguar Heritage Trust. History The cr ...

(formerly the Heritage Motor Centre).

Leyland-Thomas

After amicably leaving Leyland in 1922 J. G. Parry-Thomas moved to premises at Brooklands race track taking with him at least three chassis and a large quantity of spares. There he built the Leyland-Thomas, a racing special based on the Leyland Eight. After the death of Parry Thomas his premises were taken over by Thomson & Taylor who built the car now owned by the BMIHT.

Owners

Michael Collins, the Irish politician and revolutionary leader, was travelling in a Leyland Eight when he was fatally shot in 1922. Two cars were ordered by the Maharaja of Patiala but are not thought to survive.

References

* {{cite book , title=The Leyland Eight , author=Hugh Tours , year=1966 , series=No. 25, Profile cars , publisher= Profile Publications Eight, Leyland Grand tourers Vintage vehicles Vehicles designed by Reid Railton First car made by manufacturer