Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past History Information Request Bidston Steel Mill

I believe the three wheeler cars were called Gordons.

The factory that made Gordon cars was called Vernon industries, owned by Vernon Sangster who had Vernons pools.

The one and only model of car they produced for 4 years.



Prior to that they produced invalid cars (invacars) for at least two years.

If my memory serves me correctly, there was no reverse gear in a Gordon. To go backwards, you turned the ignition knob on the dash to off, then the "wrong way". The engine started up again - running backwards. A weirdo two-stroke! You could work your way through the gears at the same speed as going forward. A brown adrenaline moment as a passenger! My friend and fellow apprentice had one. I questioned his parentage !

I think they had the same flywheel starter/ generator as the Bond Threewheeler, it was a Siba Dynastart, with two sets of points, one for forward and one for reverse. When you turned the key one way it started forward,the other way for reverse once the engine was running it worked as a generator, quite efficient too, I'm not sure whether they used the same Villiers 9E engine as the bond, but probably did. When I had my first car (a Bond) in the early 60s I was on top of the world, I did some miles in that car, not that Id like to do it now. You'd never keep up with the traffic and you needed a bit of notice for the brakes.

Reminds me of the Scott Squirrel 2 stroke motorcycles which, if you didn't set the manual spark advance/retard lever correctly, would run backwards when started: of course, you didn't discover this until you let out the clutch.

That could have been "interesting" to say the least !!

The Gordon did have a Dynastart fitted but it also had a gearbox with reverse with just a metal bar fitted to stop the change mechanism moving into reverse.They were mostly bought by people with a motorcycle licence but for people with a full licence the bar was removed.There were two types of engine fitted. The Villiers and for a bit more power the British Anzani 250 cc. A problem that they had was, as the chain driving the axle was on the right hand side behind the engine and gearbox and were driven with a two stroke mix which was lean on oil it could seize the engine and cause a swerve to the right towards approaching traffic.

My book "Sixteen Decades in Wallasey" has a whole chapter dedicated to the time I spent working at Bidston Steel. The steel plant has now been replaced by a Tesco Superstore, it has all but disappeared off the face of the earth.
It supplied well over 300 people with high paid jobs, and security for their families. Until we were sold down the river by the government, but more of that in my book.
Some twenty years after the plant had closed May Whitenbury organised a Twentieth Anniversary Party.

Appendix 5 in my book has a full list of all the staff who worked at the Bidston Steel Mill.

https://www.roydutton.co.uk/my-books/sixteen-decades-in-wallasey/bidston-steel/