On Sunday, June 17, the annual Festival of Black Country Vehicles will commemorate the region’s contribution to British motoring.
Held inside the grounds of the Black Country Living Museum, the show will pay witness to the local area’s car manufacturing heritage; world famous marques like Bean, Clyno, Westfield, Sunbeam, Diamond, Guy and AJS are to be displayed.
The Black Country Living Museum houses the largest collection of Black Country-manufactured vehicles anywhere in the world, including buses, motorbikes and cars. All of these vehicles are on display across the Museum’s 26-acre site – better known to TV viewers as the Peaky Blinders set – inside replica shops and garages that once existed locally.
The area gained its reputation from the early 1900s when Black Country engineers turned their expertise to emerging technologies that made build pioneering vehicles possible. Wolverhampton-based Clyno was once the third largest car manufacturer in Britain, while AJS and Sunbeam carved out wins in TT races and land speed records.
Tim Shields, the Museum’s Curator of Industry & Transport commented: “The Black Country has a well-deserved reputation for vehicle manufacturing.” This year, the Museum is to extend the vehicles on show to those built in the West Midlands (Birmingham and Coventry) between the Thirties and the Sixties, donated by the Patrick Foundation, a descendent of Patrick Jensen Motors formed before the Jensen brothers split off to form their own firm.
For more info see Black Country Living Museum
