The world’s first sports car

Prince Henry? An aristocratic former naval officer, and brother of the German Emperor, Prince Henry of Prussia enjoyed draping himself in more frogging than Jeremy Fisher, Beatrix Potter’s angling, croaking inhabitant of a ‘slippy sloppy house’. But he was, nevertheless, a motoring enthusiast, sponsoring a short-run series of 1230-mile motor trials for touring cars with four seats, known as Prinz-Heinrich-Fahrt (Prince Heinrich Tour), which were held between 1908 and 1911 just before the German Grand Prix. These were neither race nor rally but laid somewhere between the two, along with parts of the touring holiday on unbelievably tough roads. The results were calculated by an impenetrable series of handicaps, so a winners’ medal didn’t necessarily indicate the best car.

Basically a hepped-up 20HP Vauxhall model, the Prince Henry was a four-cylinder, side-valve unit displacing (at first) 3054cc, delivering an initial 48bhp and giving a top speed of 60mph (though it was timed at 65mph in the Prince Henry trial) and about 25mpg. Actually, the first-ever car, now in Vauxhall’s hands, was capable of a bit more speed, though I can’t vouch for the fuel consumption. Stripped for action, this is a four-metre-long, 2.68-metre-wide racing car for the road, which weighed about a tonne depending on the body fitted.

Sounds pretty tame, but believe me, not only is the Prince Henry a thoroughbred, it also keeps you busy at the wheel, and with sufficient observation and skill it can be moved along with some alacrity.

Kent Karslake in From Veteran to Vintage (1956) gives a driving impression of a Prince Henry which belonged to Laurence Pomeroy’s son (also called Laurence). ‘A casual glance suggests its engine is a completely uninspired design,’ he writes, ‘side valves along one side of the cylinders and the carburetter [sic] on the other but this simplicity makes it lighter than more complicated machinery, the chassis too with its “wheel at each corner” and conventional semi-elliptic springs and light unsprung parts—the brake drums on the back axle are remarkably small.’

He praises the roadholding and the performance, though isn’t quite so effusive about the brakes (small drums and a powerful but easily overheated transmission brake) and uses the car as an example of the transition from the veteran era into the vintage era.

‘The Prince Henry Vauxhall was not ahead of its time, yet in spite of its heavy flywheel, it is in all essentials a vintage car. It stands on the threshold of a new era and one can accurately describe it as the first of the vintage and the last of the veteran cars.’

Again, it doesn’t quite get over the experience of actually driving this remarkable four seater. So here goes…

Though I have driven a few of the 718 Prince Henry cars built, my first real drive came in 2003 at the re-running of the 1000-mile Trial, a massive undertaking by Vauxhall, which mapped the route, organised food and accommodation and arranged gathering points for competitors.

For some reason I was given control of Vauxhall’s arguably priceless model and by the time we got to Welshpool it was raining lightly and the mayor was proudly flagging us off from a makeshift podium, I grasped the wooden steering wheel and engaged first with the massive blade-type gearlever. A cone clutch is never the most sophisticated device, consisting of pieces of leather, hand riveted onto two halves of a cone shape. Maintenance, such as it exists, comes in the form of a dosing with Neatsfoot oil and blocking the clutch pedal at every opportunity to keep the friction surfaces apart and prevent the disgusterous unction being squeezed out. Assiduous attention to this ‘maintenance’, together with a rat-like guile, great timing and lots of luck means you can snap the Prince Henry’s enormous clutch pedal up at some speed and effect a rapid and smooth getaway.

I was about to show off this rarefied skill when the passenger door was flung open, an apologetic whisper of ‘we didn’t know what else to do with him’ and an elderly interloper was shoved into the seat beside me.

My ‘celebrity’ passenger turned out to be anything but. He was a relative of a Vauxhall high up and had clearly talked himself into the old car with the aim of ‘taking a ride’. Dressed in a wholly inappropriate garb of modern plastic storm parka, terrible canvas pumps and beanie hat, he announced himself a nervous  passenger and he’d be telling me to slow down the whole way to Chester…

Hum, with just a day to drive across the Welsh marches I wasn’t terribly sympathetic. Statistics prove that a Prince Henry would be hard pressed in a drag with a Citroën 2CV, but that not only misses the point, but fails to take in the amount you have to do in this car to drive it without roars of gear pain, spurts of vital fluids from the wrong places or maddened graunches. Double declutching up the four-speed ‘box gets us early cut into second gear out of Welshpool and I gunned the White and Poppe carburettor as we charged away into the marches like latter-day bank robbers.

My passenger’s barked commands quickly distilled into a squawked ‘Help meeth’ as we hurled onto quiet B-roads, going ever faster. With a rolling chassis price of £525 (£50,000 in today’s values), Vauxhall guaranteed a 90mph top speed when the Prince Henry was fitted to a single-seat chassis. We were far short of that, but I hope I gave a spirited drive. These were the roads which Pomeroy designed this car for, and with observation and pluck you could thread it down a winding road as near to the top speed as makes no difference. My passenger croaked like Jeremy Fisher with his leg caught in a weasel’s teeth.

The thing about very old cars is you have to surprise them into a bend as once in the corner, the body roll locks the I-Beam front suspension so stiffly the wheel is almost immoveable. Not so the Prince Henry in which the steering, the throttle and the front brakes are all equally valid means of altering attitude and cornering. After your initial trepidation and cackhandedness, it’s an absolutely fabulous machine which talks to you in the way of the best sports cars of the later parts of the century.

Mile upon mile I drove, a watery sun appeared and when we arrived in the county town of Chester in the very late afternoon, my speechless passenger was helped away by sympathetic friends. My day was done and the old Vauxhall and I were enjoying a quiet reverie when a soft voice asked how things had gone that day. I told him all about it.

‘Like Mr Toad, then,’ he laughed as I recounted the rain pooling in the buttons of the Chesterfield upholstered rear bench seat, the hissing of rain water on the exhaust manifolds, the steadfast performance of the old car and my squawking passenger.

‘You know we had to buy him two brandies to calm him down,’ he said.

I nodded and hung my head, like a recalcitrant toad.

‘I think we’d better take it away from you before you make any more mischief,’ he said, ‘but well done’.

They took the Prince Henry away on a trailer as there was no one else there qualified to drive it; I felt as though I’d lost a very old friend.

Since then, I’ve driven that old Prince Henry across Europe, up the hill at Goodwood and on several other occasions. It feels like an old Labrador and almost wags itself with anticipation when I draw near. But nothing comes close to our joint mischief making that wet day almost 20 years ago.

Porsche fans like to think the 27/80 Austro Daimlers were the first sports cars, but they’re in a minority. The Prince Henry begat the fabled 30/98 and cemented Pomeroy as a genius, but it also set a standard of qualities still required of a sports car today.

And for me it was the first. I rest the case…