Standard, Triumph & related car companies

That would be Glen's sweet factory (discussed elsewhere in the forum) and some adjoining houses. There appears also to be a shop in that row but I can't remember one when I lived there, only a factory loading bay.

Are we sure about the date of these transporters? I rather think they were in the late sixties. As far as I am aware, drivers picked up the cars from the vast Canley storage park, fitted trade plates, drove them to the docks, took off the trade plates and made their own way home. The storage area also held a lot of foreigners, by that I mean cars with the wrong engines or the wrong brakes etc. - these were sold to the workers at 17% off. If anyone's interested I can tell you how they were fitted wrong, as I worked for five years in the track control room at Canley. Mods note: Copied from "Canley Car Deliveries" thread

I for one would be interested to hear how these so called foreigners came about.

An uncle of mine worked at Canley for many years until he retired; my dad told me he worked on back axle assembly. Whilst at school in the sixties, a friend's dad worked at Canley too. His dad reckoned that every time there was a wildcat strike, and they went on short time (curse it), it was the track, with its militant workforce, that was to blame. There was also an area called "rectification", according to another lad whose dad worked there. The story was that when they drove the cars round to the rectification area, they used to race, and one day his dad cornered too fast and smashed a car into a brick wall or pile of stillages, something solid anyway. Instead of owning up, he got out the car and legged it, and was never caught. I suppose there were no cameras in those days. That was the story anyway.

My father worked at the Standard, Banner Lane and was made redundant after 20 years. As far as I know he was a 'fitter' but I was too young to know much more than that. I remember he hung his bike up in the shed and there it stayed.

The way I read the Standard Triumph history its demise started around 1960. Prior to that over half its production went to the export market, but with a severe drop in exports from that time, it struggled financially.

Would that be the Banner Lane works that later became Massey Ferguson, I wonder, Dream? Interestingly, MF had their R&D place in Maudslay Road, and earlier, that had also been the Standard Motor Company.

pixrobin. Yes I agree, around 58 time you could not get a job at Canley through management, you had to get it through the 'Trade Union'. They had such silly rules, loads of arguments about who did what, the cars had stickers on the windscreen, 67, 68 etc. One fell off, I picked it up and stuck it back on and was severely ticked off, they almost stopped the track, it was not my job. zigzag. By the late fifties, the electricians at Canley had devised a system whereby when car shells came from Liverpool they were hoisted by crane onto what was called skids, on the second floor. We then took charge with an electric panel in the basement of the building, among the stores. The track was on the ground floor, constantly on the move, each worker had a time limit to fit his piece. Now my job with a couple of colleagues was to place the shells on the track from the floor above in a sequence that allowed the worker to complete his job. We could not place two overdrives to follow each other, or two Spitfires together. There were many snags, we had to have the cars in order, about twenty cars in front of the track to allow our typists to type the sequence for all depts to have the necessary parts in order. Also the sheets the girls typed out, only a little 'o' was typed above the car to denote an overdrive car, if she missed typing such then the car got the wrong engine fitted etc, and there was many things to sort out, disc brakes or drum brakes, left hand or right hand steering, so it ran on fine timing. Now the whole of the second floor of the factory was like a giant rail siding. When a body shell was placed on the skids, we then with our electric panel moved it along the track into side bays, so my colleague would move a Spitfire onto the main track and I would move a Herald from its bay onto the track behind it, and my other colleague would move another shell behind that and so forth. We passed this knowledge to the typist so they had the sequence, each sheet of about a dozen or so cars was then run off and distributed to all stores etc. But every foreign country sent engineers and experts to see this and ask questions, went home, copied our methods, and that put us out of business long term. Two guys came in one day, one stayed with the bosses keeping them talking, the other one came over to us, pumped us with questions, which we answered. As he left he gave us each a card, said to get in touch with him in about three months time and he would offer us a top class job. The card read 'General manager of General Motors USA'. This giant panel was about 16' long and 4' high, full of lights and numbers and buttons etc and devised and built by Coventry guys.

Thanks Kaga very interesting.

I wouldn't know about that Slim, that's going back a few years now, a rough guess would be in the 50's sometime, my father then became a publican. I can recollect that quite a few were laid off at that time from what I could understand. In a way it turned his life around you could say, and he started to enjoy life again after the war years. What you say would be most likely I should think.

Yes Dream, it was the Masseys factory, I found out this morning from our old cleaner chap who used to work at Masseys. The Standard was always at Canley I'm told, but during the war, they had a shadow factory built at Banner Lane. The ghost road, of which parts still remain just to the side of Banner Lane, was illuminated at night in an attempt to fool the German bombers that it was the Fletchamstead Highway, and thus get them to drop their bombs harmlessly in the wrong place! I was not told whether it worked.

Well Slim, they had bloomin' good Christmas parties while they lasted, and I have learned now what a shadow factory was built for. My father spent quite a few nights up on the roof keeping watch, and I would imagine he would have a few tales to tell about that.

It's doubtful if the ghost road to give the Luftwaffe a bum steer ever worked: not long after the ghost road was built, they built the Standard shadow factory at Banner Lane, a bit close to any stray bombs!

Neilsyard, did you ever see the Mosquito in flight? They really were an inspiration, beautiful in flight, speed, manoeuvrability, it was a delight to watch them. I have no idea if they were as good as they looked, but it did give us a lift in spirits.