Proof of concept
Competition outings cemented Horstman’s early reputation, yet this Super Sports is the sole survivor of a near-forgotten legacy
WORDS SIMON HUCKNALL PHOTOGRAPHY MAX EDLESTON
The Horstman averaged 82mph for 200 miles at Brooklands in 1921, when equipped with an Anzani engine and no front brakes
CoventrySimplex ‘four’ is mounted well forward in the chassis
outboard brake and gear levers
only the diffhousing bears the Horstman name
The mettle of so many pre-war racing machines was proven on Brooklands’ banked circuit that to merely drive one today along a level ribbon of asphalt seems disingenuous. So, the fact that the 1921 Horstman Super Sports we’re aboard is fast approaching a four-lane wall of track, 25° steep and curving sharply to the left, is as fitting to this vehicle’s provenance as it is mildly perturbing to its driver. We’re only running at around two-thirds velocity compared with what the car would have managed more than a century ago, but the angle of turn is way more severe than the Members’ Banking. Add the strident chorus of this racer’s open exhaust, its kart-like steering and brakes that only live in hope, and it offers an approximation of what heroic pilots of yore would have experienced.
At the inaugural Brooklands 200 Mile Race in 1921, the Super Sports’ creator, Sidney Horstmann, was set to have been one such driver – quite possibly in this very car. That he passed on the opportunity to compete at the last minute, with three other Horstmans already on the starting grid, perhaps explains why TA 1798, which has no record of any subsequent race history, is now thought to be the sole survivor of its kind. It currently resides at the Great British Car Journey in Derbyshire, and if that sounds like a curious home for a Teutonic-sounding marque, it is not: Horstman is as British as roast beef and Bentley.
‘At a time when the motor car was evolving at a Herculean rate, bold engineering solutions were vital to stand out from the crowd’
Sidney’s father, Gustav Horstmann, was of Prussian descent, but moved to Britain from Westphalia in 1853. He established himself as a watchmaker in Bath and, as his son recalled years later: ‘His nimble brain [was] forever visualising new approaches to the everyday problems of life.’ It was a mindset that Sidney, born in 1881, inherited and applied to his chosen career in the emerging car industry. By 1900, he had designed and built a singlecylinder combustion engine for cyclecars, and by 1903 he’d helped set up the Bath Garage and Motor Company. In 1906, he established his own business – the Horstmann Car Company (the second ‘n’ was dropped after WW1 to make it less Germanic) – in Monmouth Place, Bath.