Peerless (UK car)

The Peerless was a British car made by Peerless Cars Ltd. of Slough, Berkshire, between 1957 and 1960, when the company failed. It was resurrected as the Warwick in Colnbrook, Buckinghamshire, between 1960 and 1962.

The prototype of this British-built sports saloon was initially named "Warwick", and designed by Bernie Rodger for company founders John Gordon and James Byrnes.

The car had been renamed Peerless by the time series production started in 1957. It featured Triumph TR3 running gear in a tubular space frame with de Dion tube rear suspension clothed in attractive fibreglass 4-seater bodywork. While the car had good performance it was expensive to produce and the overall fit and finish was not as good as that of similarly priced models from mainstream manufacturers. Production ceased in 1960 after about 325 examples had been produced.

Bernie Rodger re-started production of the car as the "Warwick" with minor changes to the appearance, a one-piece forward hingeing front end, a stiffer space-frame chassis and a revised dashboard. Although listed from 1960-62, only about 40 are thought to have been produced before this venture also failed.

John Gordon, together with Jim Keeble (who had previously inserted a Buick V-8 engine into a Peerless), subsequently used the Peerless space-frame as the basis for a Chevrolet-powered car with Giugiaro-designed, Bertone-built bodywork, initially shown in 1960 as the "Gordon GT", and which eventually reached production in 1964 as the "Gordon-Keeble".

References

* [http://www.peerless-gt.co.uk/home.htm Peerless Warwick Owners Register]

External links

* [http://www.gordonkeeble.org.uk/html/peerless___warwick.html Peerless and Warwick history from the Gordon Keeble club]