The Baby Hoyal

Brian Bromwich has a knack for finding particularly rare and unusual pre-war Triumphs in an advanced state of decrepitude, then restoring them to glory. But while he spent 30 years searching for his glamorous 1939 Dolomite Roadster, this 1928 Hoyal-bodied Triumph Super Seven rather landed in his lap.

I am the kind of person who can’t sit around doing nothing, I have to keep busy. Three years ago I was at a loose end and looking for another restoration project. A friend of mine in the Vintage Austin Register happened to mention that he had just been to see an old Triumph from 1928. It was all in bits, and he’d made the mistake of bringing his wife with him. She made it abundantly clear that he was not – under any circumstances – to bring the boxes of bits home! I asked him what kind of body it had, to which he replied that it was a Hoyal – he already had a Hoyal-bodied Austin 12, which was why he’d gone to have a look at the Triumph in the first place.

Chalmer and Hoyer was a coachbuilder set up in Poole in 1921 by three men called Chalmer, Hoyer and Allington. We don’t know why Mr Allington did not get included in the company name, but in 1926 it was Chalmer’s turn to be omitted as the company was renamed the Hoyal Body Corporation, ‘Hoyal’ being a combination of HOYer and ALlington.

Initially the company targeted contracts with major motor manufacturers rather than individual commissions. They did get a large contract from Morris in 1924, but when that company switched to pressed steel bodies of its own manufacture in 1926, Hoyal concentrated on buses at its Weybridge factory and boats in Poole. This lasted until 1931, when they went into receivership.