A Friday Lady with a penchant for cyclecars

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In the Edwardian age, middle-class motoring was mainly confined to cyclecars, which bridged the gap between oily, uncomfortable motorcycles and conventional cars which were still too expensive for all but society's most wealthy. Cyclecars were typically crude and noisy, some might even say uncouth, but they had a particularly visceral charm which appealed to a certain calibre of enthusiast (besides the impecunious), and this lady was evidently won over.

Propelled by paper discs

Her car of choice is a GWK (for Grice, Wood and Keiller), made in Datchet, Berkshire, between 1911 and 1914 and then in Maidenhead from 1914 to 1926. While few cyclecars could really be called orthodox, the GWK was especially unusual, being rear-engined and friction-drive. Even so, it was moderately popular, being very economical, capable of 35mph, and a rare example of a car in which friction-drive - where power is transferred to the wheels by way of rotating discs made of compressed paper or cork - actually worked quite well. This appears to be an Edwardian example with the twin-cylinder, side-valve Coventry-Simplex engine; from 1919, the pre-war design was succeeded by a front-engined, four-cylinder model.

Obviously, GWK ownership was a source of great happiness, as our lady's expression of demure contentment testifies. That is nothing, though, to the mischievous relish spread across the puckish face of her young son. The dog appears rather excited by the prospect of a drive, too...
 

Words and photograph: Zack Stiling / Stiling Collection
 

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