Tyneside cars: Smith's Electric

After 1927 no more cars were made in the North East (until Nissan), although some specialist vehicles have been. Vickers built the Armstrong-Saurer lorry in the 1930s. The Caterpillar Tractor Co. of Birtley made road-making rather than road vehicles. Northern General made buses in Bensham off and on from 1934, and Nothern Coachbuilders of Newcastle built bus and trolley-bus bodies for the Corporation. The story ends with Smith's Electric Vehicles of the Team Valley, the oldest (since 1920) and largest manufacturer of electric vehicles in the world (illustration).

Sunderland cars

Long before Nissan arrived cars were manufactured on Wearside. Andrew Poddie of Sunderland, a cycle manufacturer (he is believed to have invented the modern 'V' frame for bicycles), made a short excursion into the car field around 1900. Like many early car makers he was a universal workshop-mechanic, he even cast his own cylinder blocks in Sunderland. Another Sunderland cycle-maker, W. Armstrong of Vine Place, seems to have made some French cars (possibly themselves of Benz design) under licence between 1902 and 1904. I haven't been able to find any pictures of their vehicles.

Tyneside cars: Armstrong-Whitworth

Of course Vickers Armstrong played a big part in the North East motor industry. From 1902 to 1904 they produced Roots and Venables heavy-oil cars and vans - many of the latter used by the London GPO. From 1904 to 1906 they built Wilson Pilcher cars (Major Wilson, their designer, was the gearbox genius of the century inventing both the synchromesh and epicyclic versions. From 1902 to 1914 they also manufactured the Armstrong-Whitworth which was in the same class as the Rolls Royce in those days (the picture is of the one in the Discovery centre in Newcastle). The engines were made of battleship gunmetal and ran with legendary lack of wear or trouble. Mr Fred Turvey (whose father ran the first North garage in 1890) remembers them as "strong, sturdy and reliable". His father formed a consortium with J. Newton of Manchester and George Cox of Southsea to produce Lanchester cars which (surprisingly) were built in Paris. The Great War put an end to civilian manufacturing by Armstrongs, the name being transferred to Siddeley's of Coventry in 1918.

More about Armstrong Whitworth cars.

Tyneside Cars: Atkinson and Phillipson

Atkinson and Phillipson, who had built coaches in Newcastle from 1774, and built the first railway carriages in 1825, advertised a steam-powered 'horseless carriage' in 1896 - although it is not clear how many were actually produced. Other local fin-de-siecle local cars were the Martyn of Hebburn (1898), the Tyne of Gateshead (1901), the Elswick of Walkergate (1907-c1910), the Toward steam van of Byker, and the semi-mythical Redhead Rover of South Shields. Two foreign types were made under licence: the famous American Stanley Steamer (called a Gentleman's speedy roadster") was built in Gateshead around 1912-1914 (illustrated), and the French DFP (Doriot, Flandrin, Parnat) (which sported an aluminium body and mahogany interior) in Darlington. Back in Newcastle the locomotive engineers Hawthorn Leslie built heavy steam waggons.

Tyneside cars: Angus-Sanderson

The Angus-Sanderson was an attempt to produce a medium-sized and medium-priced car in the age of mass-production after the First World War. Manufactured from 1919 by an old-established coach builder in Birtley it was launched with great publicity, but hopes were dashed by the success of the Austin 12, and, after a move to Hendon in Middlesex, production ceased in 1927. Few survive of the 3000 or so made, but this 1921 example turned up for auction in 2004.

Willie Fisher

Vilyam Genrikhovich Fischer alias Willie Fisher alias Rudolf Abel, one of the most important Soviet intelligence officers, was born in Benwell, Newcastle, in 1903. His parents were socialist ethnic Germans who had fled Russia two years earlier as the Tsarist secret police closed in on them. They lived in Cullercoats and Whitley Bay while Willie attended Whitley Bay Grammar school and then Rutherford College in Newcastle (whilst also following an apprenticeship as a draughtsman at Swan Hunter's). His father, Heinrich, meanwhile, was running arms to the Bolsheviks out of the Tyne and Blyth from a clandestine warehouse in Leazes Park Road.
The family returned to the newly-established USSR in 1921 where Willie trained as a radio operator and was recruited into the OGPU (KGB). He illegally entered the United States in 1947, where, while posing as an artist, he ran a network of 'atom spy' agents. He was captured by the FBI in New York in 1957 and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment for espionage. In 1962, however, he was exchanged for the U-2 spy-plane pilot Gary Powers and returned to Moscow.
'Rudolf Abel' was the codename used by Willie on his arrest to alert the Soviet Government. He died in 1971. His last words, delivered in English and, it is said, with more than a slight Geordie accent, were "I was a German anyway".