This charming brochure is for the 'Dorway' folding sidecar. Very much a product of its times. Back in the day you weren't allowed to park on the street overnight as streetlights were turned off at midnight.
It's hard to date the brochure exactly but it is more than likely from the early twenties. Several other sidecar manufacturers offered folding sidecars. The surviving British sidecar manufacturer Watsonian's first offering was folding model from 1912.
Clever, but it doesn't solve the problem of what is to be done with the bulky sidecar body itself. Where does that go? Into the garden? Inside the front hallway? The chassis folds but not the passenger compartment. No word on what that thing weighs but two people are shown as necessary just to get it off the chassis. From there they will have to carry it! Amusing.
ReplyDeleteI guess that they were different times and folks would put up with a lot more inconvenience. Back then most of the British housing stock was not built with motor vehicles in mind. Many houses were terraces built on the street with passageways going through to the back garden where there may well be a shed or store for a motorcycle.
DeleteActually I would imagine that lifting the sidecar body would be the least of worries as most were quite light, though it would be very cumbersome as a one man job. I would think that pushing a bike through a gate or down a passageway with its third wheel tucked close in would be a great annoyance!
Another factor is that the sidecar would have been very easy to fully detach and re-attach so many owners would have used them at weekend only for family outings whilst riding to work in the week.