The story
History
Donald Bennett (1910–1986) was born in Australia, commanded the RAF’s Pathfinder Force from 1942 to 1945 and became the youngest Air Vice-Marshal it ever had. In 1945 he was a Liberal MP, for Middlesbrough West, for 73 days, and afterwards he founded Airflight, which flew in the Berlin Airlift.source 1 He designed and built light aircraft as well as cars (see aircraft makers).source 1 In 1954 he set up a factory in the middle of Chalfont St Peter, in Buckinghamshire. Fairthorpe Ltd was listed that year as a firm for development work and special machining, with Bennett as chairman and Dart Aircraft as an associate company.source 2source 3source 4
The Atom, launched in 1954, was the first Fairthorpe.source 2source 4 The owners’ club says Bennett wanted a car for younger people with sporting pretensions that would do 97 km/h and 60 miles per gallon.source 3 It was a glass-fibre coupé with a motorcycle engine at the back, a three-speed Albion motorcycle gearbox, chain drive to the rear axle, a backbone chassis, independent coil springs all round and hydraulic brakes.source 2 Which engines it had depends on whom you read. Robson lists 250 and 350 cc BSA singles and a 322 cc Anzani twin; the club names an Excelsior two-stroke and BSA engines of 250 and 650 cc; German Wikipedia gives BSAs of 249, 348 and 646 cc.source 2source 3source 5
Glass fibre was new, and, the club says, everyone was learning how to work it, Bennett included. It adds, with a pun on the name, that the Atom perhaps did not go like one. There was development work and there were export orders from America, but the car was not a great commercial success.source 3 Robson counts 44.source 2
A van on paper
A leaflet of about 1956 offered an Atom Wagonette van, 3,429 mm (11 ft 3 in) long and 1,575 mm (5 ft 2 in) wide, at £255 plus purchase tax with a manual starter, £15 more with an electric one, and up to £327 plus tax for the 3E. A differential was an extra, and 55 to 60 miles per gallon was claimed. Old Classic Car, which describes the leaflet, says the equivalent Atom cars cost about £4 more. Whether any Wagonette was built is not known.source 6
The Atomota, and after
In 1957 a new general manager, John Green, formerly of Daimler, led a redesign. The Atomota moved the engine to the front: a 646 cc BSA twin from the Golden Flash motorcycle, driving through a Standard gearbox (from the Standard 10 by one account, the Standard 8 by another) and a propeller shaft to a hypoid rear axle.source 2source 3 It was shown at Earls Court in 1957, and the last seems to have been made in 1960; how many were made is uncertain.source 3source 2 Giles Chapman later put it in his book The Worst Cars Ever Sold (2011).source 5
Fairthorpe’s future lay in kit sports cars: the Electron of 1956 and the Electron Minor of 1957, which became its mainstays, sold as kits from 1959.source 2source 3 The firm moved to Gerrards Cross in 1961 and Denham in 1964, Bennett’s son Torix joined in 1967, and it closed in the mid-1970s.source 4source 2
