Automotive Products

Automotive Products, commonly abbreviated to AP, was an automotive industry components company set up in 1920 by Edward Boughton, Willie Emmott and Denis Brock, to import and sell American-made components to service the fleet of ex-military trucks left behind in Europe after World War I.

AP Lockheed disc brake caliper

In 1928, they obtained a licence for the manufacture and sale of the Lockheed Hydraulic Braking System for the British Isles and Continental Europe,[1] and in the following year they acquired a controlling interest in Zephyr Carburetors Limited which had premises in Clemens Street, Leamington Spa. A subsidiary company named the Lockheed Hydraulic Brake Company Ltd was formed and brake component manufacture began.

In 1931, the Borg & Beck Company Limited was set up to manufacture clutches under American patents from Borg & Beck in the USA. This allowed the company to sell British made Borg & Beck clutches in Great Britain, overseas British possessions and the British Empire (except Canada). The same year, the first block of a new purpose-built factory in Tachbrook Road was opened, extending by 1970 to some 70 acres.[2]

The company became the UK's leading manufacturer and supplier of clutches and braking, and was dominant in the market until the end of the 1970s.

AP also developed a close technical partnership with the British Motor Corporation (BMC), in the development of automatic transmissions. One of the most notable products of this collaboration was the unique AP automatic transmission used in the Mini and later BMC/BL compact models. The two companies jointly owned a plant in Kings Norton to produce the transmissions, and the matching variants of the A-series engines to go with them.

The business was bought by BBA (British Belting and Asbestos) in 1986, and sold on to a management consortium in 1995.

With the decline of the British Motor Industry, and increased competition from manufacturers in Europe, AP saw its sales shrink. The Leamington Spa site was gradually reduced, until the business was broken up, and its mainstream automotive division was sold in 2000 to Delphi Automotive Systems. The braking division, The Lockheed Hydraulic Braking Company, was sold to an Indian multi-national, who supplies brake systems under the name Caparo AP Braking.[3] The brake division was bought by Raicam Industrie of Italy and moved to Redditch.

The Caparo company is unconnected with AP Racing, a competitor who specialised is high performance brake and clutch systems for motorsports applications.[4] This company has since been purchased by Brembo S.p.A., but is still run as a separate entity.