Nobel 200

The badge says Nobel, not Noble, though the man behind it was York Noble, the adopted name of the Vienna-born Jakob Knoblauch.source 1source 2 In May 1956 he set up Noble Motors as the British importer of the Heinkel Kabine, and from July that year it sold the cars from 211 Piccadilly.source 1source 3 When Heinkel’s production moved to Dundalk in 1958, on its way to becoming the Trojan 200, Noble needed something else to sell.source 1source 4 He had already formed York Noble Industries in December 1957.source 1

In June 1958 the company announced the Nobel 200 saloon and the 200 Vicky, a pick-up, as kits or complete cars. Both were redesigned versions of the Fuldamobil S‑7, entirely British-built except for the Sachs engine (see built under licence).source 1 Shortly before, Sir Matthew Slattery had sent a team from Short Brothers to see whether they could build it, and in September the carpet manufacturer Cyril Lord was named chairman and manufacture in Northern Ireland was announced.source 1source 2

Hawthorn’s tea-boy

That September Mike Hawthorn flagged away two Nobels on a promotional run called “By Bubble Car to Venice”. At the Paris show in October he was announced as the company’s Technical Director, beside two left-hand-drive four-wheeled saloons, one with a sunroof.source 1

The car itself was spread across the country. Short Brothers & Harland assembled it at its Glen Works in Newtownards, and later at Queen’s Island in Belfast; the Bristol Aeroplane Company moulded the glass-fibre bodies at Coalpit Heath; Rubery Owen made the chassis; and Fichtel & Sachs sent the engines (see aircraft makers).source 1source 4 About 90 per cent of the parts were made somewhere other than the assembly plant.source 1 It was a 191 cc two-stroke bubble car, mostly a three-wheeler in Britain, with a four-speed gearbox and a reverse worked electrically.source 1source 2 Every production car was white, with peacock-blue lower panels.source 1

Problems from the start

The front brakes inherited from the Fuldamobil were faulty, and fixing them delayed production by months. Bristol tried high-pressure injection moulding for the bodies before going back to laying them up by hand, and self-coloured bodies were tried and dropped.source 1 Assembled saloons officially went into production in February 1959, with a capacity of 250 a week claimed; the Beaulieu Encyclopedia says 400 a week were planned.source 1source 2 At £317 before purchase tax it was, apart from the four-seat Reliant Regal, the dearest three-wheeler in Britain.source 1

The publicity ran ahead of the factory. The car was shown in London, Paris, Geneva and New York in 1959, and at New York 1,450 were said to have been sold, “a million dollars for Britain”; no exports to the United States are recorded. One kit went to New York in April 1959, and in May kits were said to be at least six months away.source 1 RM’s catalogue adds that Princess Soraya, the former Queen of Iran, was appointed a co-director, which no other source read confirms.source 4

The end in Northern Ireland

Bristol tried to raise its price for the bodies, and shipping engines and chassis to Northern Ireland and the finished cars back again made the whole arrangement untenable. On 4 August 1959 it was announced that Shorts would stop after the first 1,500 cars. Days later Shorts’ workers struck over redundancies, the Northern Ireland Labour Party took up the Nobel, and it called for the Stormont parliament to be recalled.source 1 Cyril Lord announced talks with English firms and said that Fairey Aviation, at Heaton Chapel in Stockport, would make a Nobel utility and a sports convertible; nothing came of it in the sources read. RM says Shorts sold the moulds late in 1959.source 1source 4 By January 1960 the chassis numbers had reached only about 400.source 1

An open Nobletta appeared in 1960, the company merged with Lea-Francis in 1961, and production ended in 1962; where those last cars were made is not known.source 2source 1 In Chile, Autos Nobel Sud Americana built similar cars as the Nobel Chile.source 2 The York Noble group was struck off in 1969.source 5

No count of surviving Nobels has been found. The Register of Unusual Microcars wrote about the car in its magazine in 1985.source 1 The Weiner museum’s car, a 1958 right-hand-drive three-wheeler, chassis 0268, still unrestored and with the early roof-mounted indicators, fetched US$10,350 at the museum’s sale in February 2013.source 4