This car being largely unknown, I thought I’d give you some insight into how the cars came to exist.Paramount Motors was the the creation of two men: Sam Underwood and Bill Hudson, an ex police inspector. Both men were car obsessed and had met whilst working for a Vauxhall dealership after the Second World War. With Bill being the sales manager and Sam being the mechanic, they felt they had the winning formula to create a car brand of their own and so, in 1947, they said goodbye to their jobs at Vauxhall and opened Paramount Motors on the High street of Swadlincote, Derbyshire.
source.image: idriveaclassic
The Paramount car as you see here today, was designed with an underslung ladder frame chassis with independent front suspension by top wishbones and a low transverse leaf spring, a live rear axle on semi-elliptical springs and then finished with Girling Hydro-mechanical brakes. The body was made from aluminium panels on an ash frame – which may not surprise you given the low volume of surplus steel knocking about.
With Bill being the sales manager and Sam being the mechanic, they felt they had the winning formula to create a car brand of their own and so, in 1947, they said goodbye to their jobs at Vauxhall and opened Paramount Motors on the High street of Swadlincote, Derbyshire. We’ve discussed it previously, but after the Second World War, the UK had a policy whereby car manufacturers had to export a high volume of their cars or they’d have no access to the steel they needed to make the cars; the steel industry being government regulated at the time.
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With rationing still firmly in place, cars in short supply and glamour both scarcer still; the motoring duo decided they wanted to build on their shared love of MGs and Jaguars and build a luxury car of similar ilk to appeal to not only the UK market but the bigger market in the US – where car sales were much more abundant. Lack of funds and poor financial foresight seems to be a running theme with Paramount. the grand initial plans to fit an Alvis engine pinched from an Alvis 14 were soon overtaken by cost concerns and this meant the plans had to change: gone were the initial Alvis engine and suspension and in its place were a Ford 1172cc side valve engine rigged up with twin carbs.. /idriveaclassic
