The Ashby was a

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 ...

produced in

Towcester Towcester ( ) is an affluent market town in Northamptonshire, England. It currently lies in West Northamptonshire but was the former administrative headquarters of the South Northamptonshire district council. Towcester is one of the oldest ...

, Northamptonshire, and

Chorlton-cum-Hardy Chorlton-cum-Hardy is a suburban area of Manchester, England, southwest of the Manchester city centre, city centre. Chorlton (ward), Chorlton ward had a population of 14,138 at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census, and Chorlton Park (w ...

, Lancashire, between 1919 and 1924 by Victor Ashby and Son, who owned a garage in

with manufacturing capabilities. After returning from the First World War the younger Victor Ashby designed a

that came to the attention of aeroplane makers

Short Brothers Short Brothers plc, usually referred to as Shorts or Short, is an aerospace company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shorts was founded in 1908 in London, and was the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes. It was particu ...

. Short Brothers employed six Ashby staff members, with the car being known as the Short-Ashby in 1921. Short Brothers withdrew their support in 1922 owing to poor sales. The Ashbys then moved to

, where production of a two-seater light car powered by a 970 cc 8 hp engine, three-speed gearbox or four-ratio

friction drive A friction drive or friction engine is a type of transmission that utilises two wheels in the transmission to transfer power from the engine to the driving wheels. The system is naturally a continuously variable transmission; by moving the two ...

, continued until 1924.Baldwin, Nick, ''A–Z of Cars of the 1920s'', Bideford: Bay View Books, 1998

Footnotes

Vintage vehicles Cyclecars Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of England Companies based in Northamptonshire Defunct companies based in Manchester {{Vintage-auto-stub