The Skinner Special comes home

The 1931 Triangle Skinner Special has been acquired by Burlen, owners of the SU Carburetter Company.

If you didn’t already know, SU stands for Skinners Union, a Ltd company formed by the brothers Herbert and Carl in 1910 shortly after they patented the idea behind the legendary ‘constant depression’ SU carburetter.

The Triangle Skinner Special is the direct descendent of a Supercharged Morris Minor SV used as a publicity vehicle by Morris to show that their new ‘£100 Morris’ could reach speeds of 100mph and a fuel consumption of 100mpg. The car attained the 100mph target at Brooklands over an officially timed mile. It was then gifted to the Skinner family and converted into a hill climb special by Peter Skinner, son of Carl, in the early thirties.

The car has a significant continuous history showing its journey from the hands of the Skinners, through the post War years and onto its present owners. Of particular note was when in the hands of Ted Lloyd-Jones (of Triangle Garage fame). He was responsible for rebuilding the chassis and bodywork to fit around the Hudson straight eight engine, and it is in this guise that it remains today.

More recently the special was owned and driven by Andrew Harding and it was by pure coincidence that he made contact with Mark Burnett, Managing Director for Burlen. Mark remarked, ‘We had used a picture of the car that we had in our history file for an advert which Andrew had seen and contacted me for a copy. We got talking and he mentioned that the special would be for sale soon. It was an opportunity we felt we couldn’t miss!’  When asked what intentions were with regards to the car, Mark answered, ‘...it’s a very special vehicle to us and this acquisition completes an eighty year cycle of ownership, back into the hands of the SU Carburetter Company.