Baughan was a British

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 ...

and motorcycle manufacturer in business from 1920 until 1936. Founded in 1920 in Harrow, Middlesex, from 1921 the company moved to

Stroud Stroud is a market town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is the main town in Stroud District. The town's population was 13,500 in 2021. Below the western escarpment of the Cotswold Hills, at the meeting point of the Five ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

. After motorcycle production finished the company continued in general engineering and plastics.

H.P. Baughan

Henry P. "Harry" Baughan was a well-known motorcycle trialist and organiser of such in the 1920s, many of which were close to his childhood home of Stroud, Gloucestershire; although he himself at the time lived in Harrow, Middlesex whilst working as an aircraft engineer. From these sporting beginnings - at a time when making and experimenting with motorcycles was considered a normal, almost home-based art - Baughan began to make his own machines.

Production

In the 1920s, he had made his own first four-wheel cyclecar, powered by an air-cooled

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 ...

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 longi ...

. Asked by fellow competitors to make them a similar machine, he productionised it through use of a JAP or water-cooled Blackburne V-twin, of either 998 or 1097 cc. Drive was to the rear wheels through a

Sturmey-Archer Sturmey-Archer was a manufacturing company originally from Nottingham, England. It primarily produced bicycle hub gears, brakes and a great many other sundry bicycle components, most prominently during their heyday as a subsidiary of the Raleig ...

three-speed-and-reverse gearbox and chain final drive. The chassis had a wheelbase of with suspension by quarter elliptic leaf springs all round. Lightweight two-seat open bodies were fitted. Car production finished in 1925, but new cars were still listed for sale up to 1929. It is not known how many cars were made, but at least one survives. After his own success in motorcycle trials in the early 1930s, Baughan began to make a range of trial-optimised motorcycles until 1936. Although a production template existed, each machine was a bespoke per-customer fitment. Powered again using either Blackburne or mainly JAP V-twins, ranging in size from 250 to 500 cc, each used qd real-wheel. Production is believed to have been small. As

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

approached, and with his own sporting success ad that of his machines fading, Baughan focused his skills on the production of aircraft parts.

Post-World War II

Baughan Ltd continued to exist into the new millennium as a producer of plastics processing equipment. They manufactured a large range of equipment including single screw extruders and 2-roll mills, with much still in use today. The company was eventually acquired by the now defunct Rondol Technology Ltd, a

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

-based manufacturer of polymer processing equipment.

References

{{British motorcycle manufacturers Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of England Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1920 Vehicle manufacturing companies disestablished in 2003 Motorcycle manufacturers of the United Kingdom Motorcycle trials Cyclecars Companies based in Stroud, Gloucestershire British companies established in 1920 British companies disestablished in 2003

H.P. Baughan

Production

Post-World War II

See also

References