The Grafton Cyclecar

Having grown up with vintage cars, it was only natural that I would eventually end up with one. It was to be an Austin 7 Ulster from 1930 which I bought in 1994. The same year, the Vintage Sports Car Club celebrated its anniversary and I found myself driving that little Austin to Malvern for a  week of festivities. It was here that I was introduced to Cyclecars via a special gathering had been organised for these quirky little vintage cars. I went along to see what all the fuss was about and it soon became apparent that I had found my mecca! I needed to build a Cyclecar, and while casually chatting to a fellow vintage cycle enthusiast and cyclecar owner, he suggested that I read the rather conveniently titled book - "How To Build a Cyclecar".

An incredible little book which describes everything a budding Cyclecar builder would need, including the tools and workbench. It was a good start, but I wanted to build a Cyclecar that represented a mix of 'real parts' with an interpretation of what a Cyclecar builder might have built back in the day. I remembered the booklet which I’d picked up from that Cyclecar gathering. The back page showed an article from  'The Cyclecar' magazine dating from 1913. It described a half sized car called the GN-ette. It had been built by an employee of the GN Cyclecar works as a sort of lunchtime project using just bicycle and motorcycle parts with a caption: 'Who will build one?'. This was the project I had been looking for; so armed with my copy of How to build a Cyclecar and the GN-ette story, in 1995 'The Grafton Cyclecar' was conceived. 

I wanted to build the car with as many period parts and features as possible. The aim was to be as authentic to the original era as possible. Autojumbles across the UK and France became regular haunts and I started to think like a period engineer and vintage special builder, while religiously adopting and repurposing original parts found to work somewhere else on car. 

Jumping forward to 2001 and after 6 years, the Grafton Cyclecar's first outing was at Vintage Montlhery in France. To get the car running, I had bought a 250cc Levis two stroke motorcycle engine at Beaulieu autojumble for £40; it did one lap of the circuit before the engine seized. This engine had to go as it was troublesome and had about as much torque under load as a rice pudding skimmer. I replaced it with a 1919 300cc JAP racing side valve engine I had managed to acquire from a local vintage aircraft and motorcycle collector, increasing the power and ultimately more torque which the old engine never had. However, a more powerful engine meant that other mechanicals started to fail, so over time parts were modified and changed for more suitable and stronger vintage components. The car evolved over the years; wooden aeroplane style wings were made by a carpenter friend to match the cars ash chassis and aero wooden and fabric bodywork. During the following years of development, I took the Grafton back to Vintage Montlhery many times, along with several festival of slowth events in the UK and France.

The most memorable times were in 2018 and 2022 while attending the glorious festival of slowth weekends in Burgundy with other Cyclecar owners. 60 miles of quiet French roads driving a primitive cyclecar I’d built was a truly brilliant experience.

In 2023 myself and the car were lucky to be invited to be part of the Cartier Style et Luxe concours at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Just being part of this occasion was enough. However, it was at that time that I felt it was time to search for a new custodian for the Grafton Cyclecar. This didn’t take long and the Grafton is now in the new capable hands of Eddie who is using and loving it as much as I did.