This car marks Wolseley’s move into serious car production. Alongside a 5hp, the 10hp featured in the firm’s first catalogue that was issued by Herbert Austin in May 1901.

As well as changing its name from the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company to the Wolseley Tool & Motor Company, a plant was also set up at Adderley Park in Birmingham in 1901 and delivered 327 cars by the end of the year, making it one of the largest and most important car manufacturers in Britain. At the outbreak of the First World War Wolseley was the market leader and were delivering 3,000 vehicles each year.

Choices for the car included solid or pneumatic tyres and a sprag brake to prevent it from running backwards on hills. The car was fitted with Herbert Austin’s early hallmark: a horizontal twin-cylinder engine, as he distrusted the performance and lubrication abilities of engines with vertical cylinders. He only changed his mind about this when he set up his own company.

This 10hp has a tonneau body constructed by Anne Cowburn’s Manchester-based coachbuilding firm. The company had been a horse carriage and harness manufacturer since 1779 and continued to build carriage and motor car bodies until the First World War.