Talbot 14-15

The Six-Cylinder Talbot 14-45 was designed to match the quality of the Roll-Royce 20 at half the size, half the weight and a quarter of the Price.

Although they may sound French, Clement-Talbot were a thoroughly English firm. They started by importing Clement-Bayard cars from France in 1903 but soon became manufacturers on their own account. The Talbot name came from the Right Hon the Earl of Shrewsbury and Talbot, a director and leading shareholder. His family crest, a Talbot hound surmounted by a coronet, became their trademark. The company were rapidly to achieve a leading position in the automotive world. Strangely, throughout their changing history they always retained the company name of Clement-Talbot Ltd over their North Kensington factory in Barlby Road, London.

Clement-Talbot took part in a three way merger in 1919. The other partners were Sunbeam, of Wolverhampton, and Darracq, of Suresnes, Paris. Together they formed a powerful Anglo-French combine -- Sunbeam-Talbot-Darracq (STD). The Swiss born Georges Roesch had joined Talbot in 1916 as chief engineer and should therefore have been well placed for a successful role in the new group. But the overall technical direction was in the hands of Louis Coatalen, who at that time was not a man to hand over the reins of power to another lightly. For the next six years Roesch's future with the combine was in doubt. He drifted from one factory to another. Then, after taking responsibility for four-cylinder engine design in Paris, Roesch returned to Barlby Road, where he was given the task of restoring the company's fortunes. This he did with aplomb. He created the 14-45, a small capacity six-cylinder design that was light, roomy and inexpensive, while its successors were refined, fast and elegant.

Introduced in 1926, the design was little changed during a production run that lasted until 1932, when it was renamed the 65. In this form, production continued until 1935. This was a quite outstanding production run, considering the rapid development of the motor car generally during that period. It shows how advanced Roesch's thinking had been in the '20s. A total of 11,851 examples were produced. The 14-45 was undoubtedly the sensation of the 1926 Olympia Show. It created an immense furore. Roesch's aim all along had been to produce a car as good as the Rolls-Royce 20, but with only half the engine capacity and one quarter of the selling price. The new car embodied a six-cylinder engine of 61mm bore by 95mm stroke, giving a capacity of 1666cc. It sold for only £395. The Rolls-Royce 20 had a capacity of 3127cc and cost anything up to £2000. The general finish of the 14-45 was outstanding, and its road-holding qualities were exceptional. A generation of enthusiastic motorists will remember the extremely clean mechanical lines of this car and the many ingenious details which characterised its construction. Within a year, over 50 cars per week were being delivered. It was not just a technical tour de force, it was also a highly successful commercial proposition, showing that the public do appreciate a good thing when it comes along.

The 1445 (14 for the RAC Road Fund rating and 45 for the target brake horsepower) did not pretend to a high performance. Its small engine size limited its maximum speed to about 60mph, while the weight of 24~cwt meant that the acceleration was steady rather than brisk. To remedy these defects the designer introduced, two years afterwards, a larger six-cylinder model on the same general lines. It had a bore and stroke of 69.5mm by 100mm and a capacity of 2276cc. This was the 75 -- but that is .another story. The most remarkable feature of the 1445 engine, and even Coatalen was impressed by it, was the brilliant valve gear, operated by a pushrod and rocker system which Roesch had devised two years earlier in Paris. The solid pushrods were made in one piece, no thicker than fencing wire, with rounded tips. No time and money were to be wasted on tubular rods with separate built-up end pieces, nor on individual production in the Talbot factory. With 12 to an engine they could be mass produced in quantity, and Roesch had already secured a provisional contract for them to be made in a knitting needle factory in Redditch. Coatalen had never seen anything so light and inexpensive, nor had he seen such clever rockers, so short and stiff as they pivoted on their wedge-shaped fulcrums, and with the simplest adjustment in the world: just one locking nut to be slackened, allowing a whole fulcrum to be raised or lowered -- and incidentally making it as easy to change a rocker as a sparking plug. Considerable attention was paid to the water cooling of the engine. It must be remembered that gaskets were something of an Achilles heel to the designers of the period. Roesch therefore returned to basics. He was determined to do without a water pump of any description. To achieve this, he provided multiple passages for circulation in the vertical plane, aided by multiple passages between cylinder block and head along the whole face of the joint. The idea was for the water to be dispelled at the top through four large vaults immediately above the exhaust valve seats, collected in a large diameter aluminum water manifold and returned to the radiator -- relying entirely on the thermo-syphon principle. Moreover, by the simple expedient of mounting the radiator on two feet, one of which was hollow, protruding from the cylinder block, he was able to feed cooling water from the radiator directly into the engine, thus obviating the need for a bottom water hose and another cause of likely irritating failure. In addition he eliminated another Achilles heel, fan belt, by incorporating fan blades on the flywheel to induce air/low through the radiator past the engine. A direct coupled dynamotor also eliminated the generator drive belt.

This truly amazing engine design has excited motoring enthusiasts for decades. Roesch was the first to demonstrate that the gap in Potential performance between pushrods and overhead camshafts was smaller than was generally realised. It was not until 1948 that timing chains and design techniques had progressed sufficiently to allow Jaguar to market the first viable, mass production, twin overhead camshaft engine. Today twin overhead camshafts, usually driven by cogged belts, are the norm for even quite mundane family saloons. But it took from 1926 until 1948, 22 years, for the writing to appear clearly on the wall. In that motoring masterpiece, Georges Roesch and the Invincible Talbot, the late Anthony Blight went so far as to claim that the bottom half of the Jaguar XK engine bore more than a passing resemblance to the Roesch design.

George Roesch's engine design was not the only remarkable feature of the 14-45 Talbot. The chassis received equal attention. The engine was mounted in it without any flexible coupling. Though this was not in itself unusual, even in the mid-'20s, it provided remarkable stiffness, at the expense of considerable weight. Developed from the previous 12-30 model, it was wider and of a shape advantageous to coachbuilders who wished to mount their designs directly upon it. The chief advantage of the solid engine mountings, however, was the opportunity they afforded for the transmission to be designed right through to the rear axle in one unit, completely enclosed from dust and dirt. In theory this was fine, but when problems did occur it was a major undertaking to dismantle and a cause of considerable expense. The delightful 14-45 featured in this article is owned by Patrick Deale, an enthusiastic motorist who bought the car comparatively recently. Originally the chassis was bodied in-house by Darracq. It was delivered by the coachbuilder to Warwick Wright on 2nd April, 1930. The first owner, likely to be a Mr S D Howlett, had the car rebodied early in its life by Salmons and Sons as a Tickford sunshine saloon. That he enjoyed his purchase is proved by the fact that he retained it until 1970, when he began to restore it. During this time he replaced the original Smiths carburetor with a Zenith V-type. As far as it known this is the only alteration he made from the standard specification. The car subsequently passed through a number of hands. The records show that the body was repainted in 1981, the pistons were replaced in 1989 and further body restoration was completed in 1991, with a further repaint last year.

The Salmons Tickford body style featured a fully lined fabric roof which could be raised and lowered by a gear mechanism, worked by inserting a cranked winding handle. Although the roof retracts completely, the side windows and cant rails remain fixed, and thus relieve the occupants from much of the buffeting associated with open air motoring. With its original head lining, leather and mahogany trim, folding seat dividers front and rear, ashtrays, six leather pockets, interior light in the rear compartment, winding glass windows, rear window blind, woven silk door pulls and hand holds, the car has the feel of a luxury saloon when the hood is raised. This body was an approved Talbot fitment. It was popular with many motor manufacturers of the period, in particular the 20hp Armstrong Siddeley. Even cars as small as the Austin Seven were fitted with a body of this type. The first impression one gains of this fascinating car is of its comparative width, coupled with low build and a driving position that tends to offer all the controls in easy to reach positions. At 14ft overall length, it is relatively large and it is most surprising to learn that the engine is of but 1666cc -- the car would appear to warrant at least a three-litre unit, to which size the succeeding 105 range had grown by 1931. Indeed, the final development of this engine was stretched to 3377cc for the 110 model that was introduced in 1934.

This is a family car with no pretensions whatever to be a competition vehicle. When it was built, the STD combine had other designs far better qualified for their sporting aspirations. Yet certain qualities come through which show that they had learned from their considerable experience in this field. The principal aspect that has benefited is the braking system. It controls all four wheels, naturally, and operates via a rod and single cross shaft at the back, and at the front by Perrot shafts geared to revolve against the direction of motion. The car pulls up squarely in a remarkably short distance, with comparatively light pedal pressure. Unfortunately we were unable to test the brakes severely, but during our test they certainly behaved extremely well. The other mechanical point worthy of comment is the steering. Georges Roesch paid considerable attention to this feature, insisting upon complete accuracy; no curves, kinks or cranks were permitted in the geometry. Of worm and nut type, the nut being coated with white metal on its bearing surface to ensure freedom from wear and a frictionless movement, it allows considerable accuracy of movement, coupled with a delightful action. An excellent steering lock is available: the car turns in a 37ft circle. As we have seen, performance was not an important factor in the design of the 14-45. The engine is quite unobtrusive, providing a maximum speed in its heyday of some 60 mph. With such a comparatively small engine capacity, the gearbox is important. It is fitted with four speeds, with a top ratio of 5.8 to one, and is relatively simple to operate. There is no synchromesh, of course. It emits that delightful high pitched whine on the intermediate ratios that is a characteristic not only of Talbot cars but also of other makes in the STD combine. The 14-45 Talbot was to save the company from a certain early demise. It grew into a range of family saloons and competition cars which was to carry the firth through the economic depression of the early '30s. Their fortunes faltered again in 1934, and they were bought by Rootes in 1935. By that time Georges Roesch was a broken man, ridiculed by his new superiors for his foreign accent and strange dress. He stayed too long before leaving in 1937.