Conan Cars Heritage Centre

[conan]

Welcome to Conan Cars Heritage Centre. My name is Steve Mur Geoff Derr, I'm the curator of the Conan Cars Heritage Centre.

Established in 1988, in Surrey, England, just a few miles from the headquarters. We at Conan Cars Heritage Centre have one and only mission, that is to preserve and herald the history of every single Conan Cars and Coaches as much as it is possible. We have the collection of hundreds of historical Conan Cars and Conan Coachworks stuff, with new addition being obtained every day from all over the world.

From the first automobile produced by Conan Derr the Third, the 1900 Conan Phaeton, to the gorgeous 1963 Coupe S V8. From the original family saloon, the 1950 Conan Compact. To the second fastest car in 1955, the beautiful FRE Revenant Quatre-Et-Demi. All of these cars have a story to tell, and we cannot let these stories went into obscurity, there's a lot of thing we can learn from the past. And we, at Conan Cars Heritage Centre believes that remembering the past will be the key to the great future.

Conan Coachworks was founded in 1862 by Conan Derr the First, in Surrey, England. To produce coaches. From that point on, the company produced a lot more of the great stuff. The company have seen many period of time. It had faces downtime, war, strikes, perils, government interference. But Conan Cars never stop, it soldiered on until the money stop, which never happened, as we're still making cars. We at the Conan Cars Heritage Centre doesn't only glorified the golden age further, we also look at the time when we stalled and fall over.

Conan Cars Heritage Centre public exhibition opens from Tuesday-Friday, 9am-4pm. Tour and Events can be arrange at almost any time, we're glad to give you a tour at 1am in the Sunday Morning if you call us. Just don't call us at Beer O'Clock, please.

[conan]

1946 Conan Compact Mk.1 2000




This is the first along the line of the Conan Compact range which is still going strong today, and the first true post war British design. The spawn point of the company's best selling car. Introduced in 1946, featuring a totally new, 4 Cylinder 2-Litre engine producing 100hp, the famous 95x70.4mm 'Surrey' 4 Cylinder Engine, the same arrangement still used to this day in the company's Compact, Compact F, Compact C, Saloon S and Saloon E range. The engine, the 1946 Conan Surrey I420NN, propels the 806kg Compact up to 97mph, 0-62mph can be achieve in only 14 seconds, hot numbers for a compact, and if you're careful, you can easily achieve 9.3lt/100km.

This car was not cheap to buy, despite having only 1998cc, it was a sales disappointment, Conan Cars couldn't match the price of other British cars company, and in the rest of Europe, they couldn't match the price of local compact cars either. And in America, it's small size was anything but a good thing, the market still wasn't convinced by it's compact dimension, not especially when it wasn't that cheap.

But, the handling and the speed gives it a market niche, the same one that is still existed in today's Conan Compact, where a similar sized car can only achieved 70mph at best, Conan Compact can do almost a 100mph. And in America, the car is heralded as the first 'true' Compact. As the smallest American Compact at the time had 2828cc engine, which was ridiculous. So while the car didn't make as much profit as the company would've liked, it did paved way to the better future.

Compact Mk.1 was produced from 1946-1955, when it was replaced by the Compact Mk.2. Total production number: 42,578.

This particular example is No.21, the 6th production model, and the 2nd car that went to the customer. Finished in British Racing Green, this is the 3rd oldest running Compact in existence. Intended to be bought new by a local GP for his wife, he decided to keep it for himself after a test drive, and it remained in the family for 38 years. It was one of the first car in our collection.

[Manche]

I feel like cramming a v8 in one of those... one things I havent seen in these museum threads is what was the fate of these cars once out of the dealership..

Ferdinand Porsche never expected his nazi-mobile to be one of the most modified cars around.

[conan]

I feel like cramming a v8 in one of those... one things I havent seen in these museum threads is what was the fate of these cars once out of the dealership..

Ferdinand Porsche never expected his nazi-mobile to be one of the most modified cars around.

It's funny you should say that, but one of the popular modification back in the day was to put the then new 1958 FRE (French Racing Engineering) 2.8 Flatplane V8 in these 1950 Compact, with 213hp I could say that the result was interesting, and sometime terrifying. I'm going to go into Conan relationship with the historical French company later, and how Conan ended up buying the whole company.

[conan]

1955 Conan Compact Mk.2 2000




In 1955 Conan Cars debut the second generation of the Compact. Using the knowledge from the first Compact, the company now knows exactly what they had to do.

The only thing remained from the Mk.1 was the engine, and even that got tweaked a little bit. The car was truly all new. Ditching the shorten pre-war design ladder frame for an all new Monocoque chassis. Along with totally new suspension system comprised with the new type of front suspension "MacPherson Strut", invented by some engineer working for a big car company in the USA a few years ago and starting to appear on some European model. Conan Cars opted to pay loyalty for the patent, instead of using Double Wishbone and having to revert back to it when the patent runs out, it cost them a bit of money at first but didn't take long until the patent runs out, but they estimated that it would be cheaper in a long run, which this car certainly did, the bloody thing lasted from 1955 to 1970.

At the back there's Semi Trailing Arms suspension. This does make the Mk.2 Compact a very special car in 1955. Because apart from very few exotic sports car of the era, not many other cars had Independent Rear Suspension.

The same 2-litre engine was provided, now with another rare feature at the time, a 4-barrel carburettor instead of 2. Officially the engine had only few more horsepower, but in the real world, the responsiveness was much improved. And while theoretically the carb would make the engine more efficient, the car weigh in at around 80kg more than the previous model. Independent test did revealed that there was no noticeable improvement on real world fuel economy.

All new suspension and change to a Monocoque chassis might have not made the Compact rides any smoother, in fact, the suspension was set up to be much firmer. Conan Cars already knew that it was not the point of the Compact. The people who bought the Compact bought them because sports cars aren't very practical. The Compact was every bit as fun to drive as one of those locally made sports cars, while retaining a lot of practicality, with even added reliability.

The Compact finally was a hit in it's home market and in Europe, while in America, it never really got off until the late 60's, then dropped off again by the time Mk.3 came. The Compact name would've got some success in America again in the 80's, but that was with the cheaper Front Wheel Drive "Compact F".

The Mk.2 Compact remained with the same suspension and bodyshell until 1970. When it was replaced by the blocky Mk.3. Available as a 4-door, and as seen here, a 2-door. Sporty Liftback version appeared in 1965 as the Compact C. Both smaller and bigger engines were added in the range, to go along with the 95x70.4mm Surrey I420 unit, which got updated with the 3v SOHC head in 1965 and then legendary 5v DOHC which appeared in 1970. Today, the Twin Cam Surrey I420 Mk.2 are seen by some enthusiasts as the ultimate Conan Compact, as even the basic version got nearly 130hp, as those didn't come with catalytic converter. And very rare, as those were only produced for the last 9 months.

Total Production Count: 746,330

This particular example is a very early Compact Mk.2, a 1955 Compact 2000. The only combination available in 1955 was the 2000 with basic trim.

[VicVictory]

I like how you carried on the overlapping tail lights between generations. That's a nice effect. Can't wait to see the generations unfold.