His name was actually Heinrich, and he was Prince of Prussia, brother to Kaiser Wilhelm, grandson to Queen Victoria. He was a car freak and a touring car contest in Germany, which eventually morphed into the German Grand Prix, was named after him. He sponsored this 1200 mile tour, which was held from 1907 until 1911. What started as a gentleman's motoring competition accidentally triggered a revolution in automotive design that would define sports cars for generations.
The only cars that were able to compete were open touring cars that could seat at least four people, and they had to carry the driver and two passengers. Only cars in regular production could enter; specially designed racing cars were specifically banned. Prince Heinrich wanted to prove that production touring cars could be fast, reliable, and practical. What he got was manufacturers building the fastest, most sporting machines they could legally call touring cars.
The formula didn't work as intended. Many cars had special bodywork and were driven not by gentlemen but by racers, including Dorothy Levitt in the sole British car, a Napier, and the overall winner, Benz factory man Fritz Erle, to the dissatisfaction and disgust of legitimate competitors. The 1908 event became a professional racing competition masquerading as a gentleman's tour. Prince Heinrich changed his regulations for 1909, handicapping factory drivers and defining body and cabin shapes more strictly.
Vauxhall saw opportunity. In 1910 there was organised in Germany the event now famous as the Prince Henry Tour. Having an idea of opening an agency in Germany, the Vauxhall company thought that to enter for this competitive run would be useful to them. The Prince Henry was a higher tuned version of the Vauxhall 20 hp that had been designed in the winter of 1907 to 1908 by then draughtsman Laurence Pomeroy when the company's chief engineer was away on holiday.
Laurence Pomeroy, Vauxhall's Chief Engineer, entered three cars in the 1910 event, each with tuned versions of the company's 3054 cc side valve engine. The cars were driven by Vauxhall's MD, Percy Kidner, and co-directors, AJ Hancock and Rudolf Selz, all of whom finished the 1230 mile event, but alas without collecting any awards. Ferdinand Porsche won. But something more important than trophies happened. However, due to the cars' speed and durability, a legend had been created.
Chief engineer Percy Kidner told Autocar: The Germans' interpretation of the rules was refined to a degree. His Royal Highness was much disappointed that his rules had not produced the bodies he wished. The drivers were all good sportsmen and behaved to us all in a very sportsmanlike manner. The roads in Prussia are so bad that our Irish highways are billiard tables by comparison, and I was filled with admiration at the way the Continental cars stood the fearful bucketing they underwent in being driven at some 30mph over them.
Later the same year a road version, known as the Prince Henry Type, was shown to the press. The Autocar noted that the new car was a particularly fast, light car for road work, with Vauxhall guaranteeing that the Prince Henry could achieve more than 90 mph when fitted with a single seat body. Ninety miles per hour in 1911. From a production car you could buy from a dealer. The number is staggering even now, let alone in an era when most cars struggled to reach 50.
With the decision to enter the Prince Henry Trial, the engine power was increased to 60 bhp at 2800 rpm and as a result of the success, replicas were put on the market at £580 with the chassis code C10 and known as the Prince Henry model. Both Austro Daimler and Vauxhall offered for sale replicas of their Prince Henry models at the 1911 Olympia Motor Show. The publicity machine worked perfectly. Customers wanted what they'd seen competing in Germany.
This was not a cheap car by any means and really only available to the wealthy. As usual Vauxhall sold just a rolling chassis, with the buyer free to commission their own four seater bodywork from their favourite coachbuilder. The publicity did them no harm at all. More trials success followed including the St Petersburg to Sebastopol Trial in 1911. Czar Nicholas the second was so impressed by the car that he ordered two of them. Vauxhall opened a sales and distribution centre in Moscow and benefited from a steady flow of sales in Russia until the 1918 revolution put a stop to all that.
The driving experience separated the Prince Henry from ordinary tourers. The driver immediately notices the heaviness of the flywheel. The clutch, a beautifully smooth Hele Shaw multi plate, hisses as it engages and the heavy flywheel gives the car a lumbering gait but then, and it is a shock, the engine shows it is longing to rev. The gear change is delightful and with each new higher gear the whole car seems to gather new life with a magnificent beat from the exhaust.
Powered by a three litre four cylinder engine providing 40 brake horsepower the overall design and quality of construction of the car was excellent and for the day it had a useful turn of speed, achieving up to 65 mph, or 70 mph under the right conditions and with a following wind. The power was increased in 1913 by the provision of a four litre engine.
Later the Prince Henry was developed into the famous 30/98 model, one of the most iconic of all sports cars. The bloodline ran directly from Prince Heinrich's touring competition through the Prince Henry to one of the greatest vintage sports cars ever built. What began as marketing exercise for a German sales network created automotive royalty.
However war clouds started to gather the following year and production was halted in 1915 whilst Vauxhall concentrated on military contracts, and it was only restarted in 1919. It is not known with any degree of accuracy just how many of these cars were manufactured, but very few, no more than perhaps 10, have survived to this day. One car photographed has been owned by Vauxhall Motors since 1946 and is thought to be a pre production example, one of only nine surviving cars in the world.
The irony runs deep. A German prince organized a competition to promote touring cars. A British manufacturer entered for publicity. Ferdinand Porsche won the event. Yet the car that defined the sports car genre, that established the template for performance production vehicles, came from Vauxhall's entry. The Prince Henry Vauxhall was not ahead of its time yet in spite of its heavy flywheel it is in all essentials a vintage car. It stands on the threshold of a new era and one can accurately describe it as the first of the vintage and the last of the veteran cars.
Prince Heinrich wanted gentleman drivers in practical touring cars. What he created was the sports car, built for speed and driving pleasure above all else.
