The Arden was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

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

manufactured from 1912 to 1916 in

Balsall Common Balsall Common is a large village in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, England. It is situated 4.75 miles (7.5 km) northwest of Kenilworth, west of Coventry, east of Solihull and to the southeast of Birmingham, to which it serves as ...

, near

Coventry Coventry ( or ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its ...

. Starting out as a light and somewhat crude

cyclecar A cyclecar was a type of small, lightweight and inexpensive car manufactured in Europe and the United States between 1910 and the early 1920s. The purpose of cyclecars was to fill a gap in the market between the motorcycle and the car. A key c ...

, by the time production finished four years later, it had grown into a well-made

four-cylinder The engine configuration describes the fundamental operating principles by which internal combustion engines are categorized. Piston engines are often categorized by their cylinder layout, valves and camshafts. Wankel engines are often categorize ...

car, featuring full four-seater

coachwork A coachbuilder or body-maker is someone who manufactures bodies for passenger-carrying vehicles.Construction has always been a skilled trade requiring a relatively lightweight product with sufficient strength. The manufacture of necessarily ...

. The first model in 1912 was a 8 hp

V-twin A V-twin engine, also called a V2 engine, is a two-cylinder piston engine where the cylinders share a common crankshaft and are arranged in a V configuration. Although widely associated with motorcycles (installed either transversely or longit ...

, air-cooled, 898 cc

JAP ''Jap'' is an English abbreviation of the word "Japanese". Today, it is generally regarded as an ethnic slur. In the United States, some Japanese Americans have come to find the term very offensive, even when used as an abbreviation. Prior to t ...

-engined cyclecar with a wooden

chassis A chassis (, ; plural ''chassis'' from French châssis ) is the load-bearing framework of an artificial object, which structurally supports the object in its construction and function. An example of a chassis is a vehicle frame, the underpart ...

. This continued in production until 1915. This was supplemented in 1914 by the 10 hp, with either a water-cooled, Alpha 1104 cc two-cylinder or 1094 cc four-cylinder engine. A larger car, the 11.9 hp with 1701 cc engine was made in 1916 only. One Arden, a 1913 Alpha two-cylinder-engined two-seat model, is known to survive.

See also