1910 Piccard-Pictet
The first Piccard-Pictet cars appeared in 1906. the work of a firm of hydraulic engineers from Les Charmilles. near Geneva. Based on the Hispano-Suiza, the cars were sold as SAGs in Switzerland. and as Pic-Pies in Britain. After a reorganisation in 1910. the Pic-Pic name was universal. andin the following year the company adopted the Argyll single-sleeve-valve engine. This is one of the last Pte-Pies to be built. a sleeve-valve. 2950cc 15cv of 1919.
1912 Renault
Alongside his popular twin-cylinder models, Louis Renault also produced some excellent four-cylinder cars such as this 1912 2120cc Type FK, which sold at a chassis price of £272. There were even a couple of big sixes in the pre-World War I lineup-the larger of them, the 37.2hp, growing even bigger after the Armistice, thus becoming the famous 9.1-litre ’45’, which was produced until 1928, the last survivor of the ‘Jurassic Age’ of the motor car.
1912 Scout
One of the more esoteric British makes of the pre World War I days was the Scout, built by Dean and Burden Brothers of Salisbury, Wiltshire. Although Scouts were available from 1904 to 1923, sales were mostly restricted to the Salisbury area. One of the few occasions on which Scout ranged outside its parochial boundaries was in 1905, when a Scout tourer took ninth place in the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy Race. The car illustrated is a 1912 12/14hp four-cylinder model.
1912 Trojan
This rotund little car is the prototype of one of the most distinctive designs ever put into quantity production, the Trojan. With a duplex two-stroke engine (whose vee-shaped connecting rods flexed to and fro as they went about their business), solid tyres and cantilever ‘wondersprings’, the Trojan was Leslie Hounsfield’s vision of a car for ‘Everyman’. ‘It’s weird but it goes!’ was how he summarised his brainchild; production did not start until 1922, some ten years later
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