Carden cyclecar

John Valentine Carden was born in London on 6 February 1892 and taught himself engineering. In 1913, at home in Farnham, Surrey, he built a single-seat cyclecar with a wooden body.source 1source 2 Its JAP engine sat behind the rear axle and drove it directly by chain, without a differential and at first without a gearbox.source 3source 2 English Wikipedia, citing Georgano, says the very first car had a 481 cc JAP single and drove the axle by belt; by the summer of 1913 it drove by chain.source 2source 3

On 16 July 1913 The Cyclecar, which had already described “the Carden monocar”, reported the latest version. The rear springing was altered, a combined tank for petrol and oil sat behind the driver, and there were mudguards. A multiple-disc clutch was built into the axle, and the car had a starting handle and a decompressor, two independent brakes for foot and hand, an Amac carburettor and a U.H. magneto. “The completely equipped machine has a very pleasing appearance,” the paper said.source 3

Teddington and the war

Grace’s Guide dates the founding of the company to 1914, with G. L. Ward as Carden’s partner, though Carden Engineering Co. Ltd of Farnham was already selling the car in 1913.source 4source 3 English Wikipedia says production moved to Teddington in February 1914, and a two-seat Carden appears in photographs of that year.source 2source 4 On 8 October 1914 The Motor Cycle reported on a Monocar on trial, registered MXY1, with a 5 hp air-cooled JAP V-twin behind the rear axle and a single gear; other models could have two speeds, by disengaging one sprocket and moving another into line with the chain.source 2

Carden joined the Army Service Corps, became a captain, and learned about Holt tracked tractors.source 1 Meanwhile the firm of Ward and Avey built his cars for him in 1915–⁠16, then bought the design and the factory, and from 1919 sold the car as the AV Monocar.source 4source 5

Three more designs

Carden did not stop at one. In 1919 he designed a new cyclecar with tandem seats, built it at Ascot, and at the end of the year sold it to E. A. Tamplin of Staines; The Light Car and Cyclecar of 8 November 1919 reported that Tamplin had acquired “all rights to manufacture the Carden Tandem Two-Seater”. It became the Tamplin.source 4source 6 In November 1920 Carden Engineering, now of Piccadilly, showed a small two-seater.source 4 A further design of 1922, a two-seater with a body of fibreboard, went to the New Carden Light Car Co., and one was sold to King Alfonso XIII of Spain.source 1 Arnott and Harrison of Hythe Road, Willesden, built the New Carden until 1925.source 4source 7 In 1925 a Carden cost £90.source 8 Baldwin’s A–Z of Cars of the 1920s, as English Wikipedia quotes it, says production of Cardens and AVs together “may have reached 1,000”; no figure for the Cardens alone has been found.source 2

From cyclecars to tanks

With Vivian Loyd, Carden then turned to military vehicles. Carden-Loyd, at Chertsey, made the One-Man Tankette of 1925 and its successors, Marks I to VI, and in March 1928 Vickers-Armstrongs bought the firm and made Carden its technical director. He went on to design Vickers light tanks, an amphibious tank, and the carrier from which the Bren Carrier descended, and later founded Carden Aero Engines and Carden-Baynes Aircraft.source 1 By then he was Sir John Carden, 6th Baronet; he was killed on 10 December 1935, when a Sabena airliner crashed near Tatsfield, in Surrey.source 2source 1 No surviving Carden cyclecar has been traced in the sources read; two cars labelled as Cardens appear in this page’s photographs, a 1916 car at the Petersen Automotive Museum, Los Angeles, in 2024, and a 1921 Model 7 at a concours.

Ward and Avey of Teddington were two cousins, George Leopold and Frederick Max Holzapfel, who during the war took their mothers’ maiden names by deed poll.source 5 Having built Cardens for John Carden in 1915–⁠16, they bought the design and the factory and renamed the car the A.V.source 4source 5 As the AV Monocar, sold from 1919 to 1924, it was one of the more successful cyclecars: a single-seater about 762 mm (30 in) wide, of about 249 kg (550 lb), with its JAP, Blackburne or MAG engine of 5 to 8 hp at the back.source 5source 1 Grace’s Guide, drawing on Wikipedia, says several hundred were made, and about 50 of a two-seat version, the Bi-car.source 5 It is likely, though not confirmed, that Carden’s partner of 1914, “G. L. Ward”, was the same George Leopold. Little else about the AV is recorded in the sources read: no dimensions beyond its width, no prices and no survivors.