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Puzzles, Games and Name That Car => Solved AutoPuzzles => 2011 => Topic started by: Otto Puzzell on March 06, 2007, 05:20:47 AM

Title: Puzzle #245 - Solved! Brooke Swan Car
Post by: Otto Puzzell on March 06, 2007, 05:20:47 AM
(http://www.autopuzzles.com/RP245.jpg)

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Title: Re: Puzzle #245
Post by: MG on March 06, 2007, 05:57:25 AM
Looks like a "black plate" California car, so must be connected with Hollyweird. Perhaps from the movie version of the children's game "Duck, Duck, Goose? I dunno. I'll have to take another gander at it later..... :P
Title: Re: Puzzle #245
Post by: JR on March 16, 2007, 06:07:51 AM
It looks like either an early Hyundai concept car or the 1910 Brooke 25/30hp Swan Car. I think it is more likely to be the Brooke.

JR
Title: Re: Puzzle #245
Post by: Allan L on March 16, 2007, 07:41:26 AM
Yes it's the Brooke: I hadn't noticed this one had moved from Rookie.

THE 1910 Brooke Swan Car was the brainchild of a wealthy British engineer, Robert Nicholl "Scotty" Matthewson, who lived at Swan Park, Calcutta, then the capital of British India. In 1909, Matthewson travelled to England to commission a truly eccentric motor car from the Brooke company of Lowestoft, Suffolk. Its wooden body was apparently built by Savage of Kings Lynn, Britain's most famous maker of steam-powered fairground rides. The swan's head and body, carved to create the effect of feathers, concealed the radiator and bonnet.

Matthewson's car arrived in Calcutta in April 1910. It had amber eyes that glowed eerily in the dark, a multi-note Gabriel exhaust horn with a keyboard in the rear of the car so that Scotty could play chords and bugle calls, and a hot water spray in the swan's beak that enabled the chauffeur to clear a passage through Calcutta's crowded streets.

It was in the fashionable Maidan Park, where Calcutta's elite promenaded in their carriages and cars every afternoon, that Scotty displayed the Swan Car's most outrageous feature. A dump valve inside the car dropped splats of whitewash on to the road from the Swan's rear end - just to make it more lifelike

Title: Re: Puzzle #245
Post by: Otto Puzzell on March 16, 2007, 09:27:34 AM
Quote from: JR on March 16, 2007, 06:07:51 AM
It looks like either an early Hyundai concept car or the 1910 Brooke 25/30hp Swan Car. I think it is more likely to be the Brooke.

JR

Correct, JR. Welcome to AutoPuzzles!
Title: Re: Puzzle #245 - Solved! Brooke Swan Car
Post by: MG on March 16, 2007, 12:00:36 PM
a hot water spray in the swan's beak that enabled the chauffeur to clear a passage through Calcutta's crowded streets.

A feature that no doubt endeared the benevolent Britisher to the great unwashed who dared block his progress about the city.

Noblesse oblige, indeed!   :P
Title: Re: Puzzle #245 - Solved! Brooke Swan Car
Post by: Ray B. on May 23, 2008, 12:04:47 PM
Matthewson was so fond of the car that he had a smaller model build in India, called the "Cygnet".
Title: Re: Puzzle #245 - Solved! Brooke Swan Car
Post by: Otto Puzzell on June 21, 2011, 06:04:03 AM
The now-expected period pic. Caption reads:

Quote
The craftsmen of JW Brooke and Company who worked on the Swan Car, commissioned by Calcutta eccentric Robert Nicholl 'Scotty' Matthewson in 1910. He was said to have been very fond of swans.