A group of 25 lots from the archives of W. Arnold, Motor Carriage Manufacturers and Agents of East Peckham, included The Horseless Carriage, a slim, 27pp pamphlet of 1895 in which Sir David Salomons presents an account of the early history of motoring, notes on legal aspects of motoring and modern developments, as well as details of his own carriages – including the trouble he had in recharging batteries on two electrical
tricycles that he had constructed 20 years earlier – before concluding that “we are on the eve of a great development”. That work was sold for £280, while John Henry Knight’s Notes on Motor Carriages of 1896, which ran to 80pp, made £300.
An instructional book for the Bentley Speed Six, a loose leaf work with fold-out oiling diagram,
contained in its black and gold buckram binding by means of a brass nut and bolt mechanism, was sold for £550, while among the periodicals, nine volumes of Auto Course from the 1950s and ’60s brought a bid of £1000.
Buyer’s premium: 15/10 per cent
Horseless Carriage Trade
Though not so credited, this coloured lithograph, Grand Prix de l’A.C.F. 1913 (Motocyclettes) has a very Gamy/Montaut look about it. In the literature section of a motoring sale held by Bonhams at the RAF Museum, Hendon, on February 25, it sold at £250.
