The Armstrong Siddeley Typhoon is a two-door, four-seat fixed-head
coupé
A coupe or coupé (, ) is a passenger car with a sloping or truncated rear roofline and two doors.
The term ''coupé'' was first applied to horse-drawn carriages for two passengers without rear-facing seats. It comes from the French past parti ...
automobile produced by the
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, ...
company
Armstrong Siddeley
Armstrong Siddeley was a British engineering group that operated during the first half of the 20th century. It was formed in 1919 and is best known for the production of luxury vehicles and aircraft engines.
The company was created following ...
from 1946 until 1949. It was based on the
Armstrong Siddeley Lancaster
The Armstrong Siddeley Lancaster is an automobile which was produced by Armstrong Siddeley Motors Limited from 1945 until 1952. It was the first post-war sports saloon to be made by the company.
The chassis of the Lancaster was all new and feat ...
saloon and continued the company's theme of naming cars after
Hawker Siddeley
Hawker Siddeley was a group of British manufacturing companies engaged in aircraft production. Hawker Siddeley combined the legacies of several British aircraft manufacturers, emerging through a series of mergers and acquisitions as one of onl ...
World War II aircraft.
The chassis had independent front suspension using longitudinal
torsion bar
A torsion bar suspension, also known as a torsion spring suspension, is any vehicle suspension that uses a torsion bar as its main weight-bearing spring. One end of a long metal bar is attached firmly to the vehicle chassis; the opposite end termi ...
s and a live rear axle with leaf springs. A
Girling hydro-mechanical braking system was fitted, with the front drums hydraulically operated while those at the rear used rod and cable.
At first the Typhoon were fitted with a 70 bhp 1991 cc, six-cylinder, overhead-valve engine, carried over from the pre-war 16 hp model, but from 1949 this changed to 2309 cc and 75 bhp by increasing the cylinder bore from 65 to 70 mm.
Hydraulic tappet
A hydraulic tappet, also known as a hydraulic valve lifter or hydraulic lash adjuster, is a device for maintaining zero valve clearance in an internal combustion engine. Conventional solid valve lifters require regular adjusting to maintain a sma ...
s were fitted to most engines, but towards the end of production there was a change to solid tappets. There was a choice of manual four-speed with
synchromesh
A manual transmission (MT), also known as manual gearbox, standard transmission (in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States), or stick shift (in the United States), is a multi-speed motor vehicle transmission system, where gear changes ...
on the top three ratios or
pre-selector gearbox.
The four-seat, two-door body was made of steel and aluminium panels fitted over a wood-and-aluminium frame with a fabric roof. The doors were rear hinged, an arrangement that got the name of
suicide doors
A suicide door is an automobile door hinged at its rear rather than the front. Such doors were originally used on horse-drawn carriages, but are rarely found on modern vehicles, primarily because they are perceived as being less safe than a fron ...
.
At launch, the car cost £1214 on the UK market.
[
]
Armstrong Siddeley Tempest
The Tempest was a very rare four-door variant and the prototype for the Whitley.
Six were built in 1949, but 5 were later recalled and destroyed by Armstrong Siddeley. The remaining one (registered JHP 113) passed into the private ownership of the late Les Clark of Ilkeston in Derbyshire, UK.
References
{{reflist
External links
Armstrong Siddeley 16–18 hp model range
Typhoon
A typhoon is a mature tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere. This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, and is the most active tropical cyclone basin on Earth, accounting for a ...
Cars introduced in 1946