Lanchester Forty History

Launched at the October 1919 Olympia Motor Show, the Forty was Lanchester's bid to challenge Rolls-Royce and Daimler for the Mayfair carriage trade and the landed gentry. It used a 6,178 cc six-cylinder overhead-camshaft engine driving through Lanchester's three-speed epicyclic gearbox, and could carry the heavy bespoke coachwork its market demanded while still pulling cleanly from about 5 to nearly 80 mph in top gear.

Servo-assisted four-wheel brakes arrived in 1924. Just 392 Forties were built across the model's roughly decade-long run (sources vary on the end date — around 1928–1929, with special-order cars a little later), and they found owners among the world's richest and most famous: the Duke of York (the future King George VI), Prince Chichibu of Japan, the shipowner Sir John Ellerman, and several Indian maharajas including Ranjitsinhji (the cricketer 'Ranji') and the Maharaja of Alwar.