Lost car of Luneside will be on display this weekend in Lancaster

Earlier this year the remains of a very special car were uncovered in a corner of a Cumbrian scrap yard.

What unfolded then was a story that might have put Lancaster on the map as a car manufacturing town in the years after World War II.

The story starts with the attempt by British MP and entrepreneur Denis Kendall to develop a post war ‘Peoples Car’ that would be a small family car, affordable for everyone. After an initial plan to set up a car factory in Grantham Lincolnshire failed, Kendall sold the idea and all the plans to the Hartnett Motor Company in Australia.

It was at this point that Luneside Engineering Company in Halton near Lancaster were contracted by the Australian firm to assemble the car in Britain.

For reasons that still remain something of a mystery, the Luneside contract fell through.

While Hartnett went ahead and produced versions of the car themselves in Australia all trace of the car that was to have been produced in Lancaster seemed to have disappeared and faded from memory.

That was until earlier this year when Chris Coates, site manager at Halton Mill which has developed the old Luneside Engineering factory into a work and event space, received a surprise ‘phone call.

“Out of the blue a worker at the Wicks recycling yard in Kendal rang and said they had found a rather strange car chassis in the corner of the scrapyard they had just taken over, which they thought had been made in Halton. It seems that at least one car was assembled by Luneside Engineering and was removed to the scrapyard once the factory closed down.”

The aluminium chassis of the Kendall/Hartnett car will be on display at Halton Mill on Saturday September 17, 10am to 4pm as part of Heritage Open Day.

There will also be the premiere of a film about Luneside Engineering at 2pm, plus an exhibition of the Luneside workers at play.

See here for details.