A Brief History of the Marque
Manufactured: Field Street, Blackpool from 1948 to 1965 using wooden bodies with aluminium alloy panelling on a steel frame. Some were fully enclosed and very spacious.
Models include: Lancastria Family Saloon, Devon and Devon II, Astralette, York I and II.
The firm ceased sidecar manufacture in 1965.
The Busmar range built in Blackpool includes this Durham single-seater coupé which. mounted on a standard rigid-wheel chassis. costs £75 4s. 2d. or, with sprung wheel, £81 15s. 3d., inclusive of P.T. The model illustrated has the "springer" chassis and, together with the other sidecars marketed by this well-known concern, can be inspected on Stand No. 129.
I should like to see the Busmar Astral catch on. Here is the first real attempt to streamline a large two-seater side-car. Only heaven and probably Harold Karslake, that mine of motor-cycling historical knowledge, could tell us how long ago someone stuck a nose on a sidecar and topped it with a near-vertical windscreen. Sidecars have had noses ever since. And in their vast, chilly spaces, the legs of winter passengers have bobbed up and down like icicles in a freezing sea.
The man responsible for the surgical operation which has abolished the snub-nose is Len Smith, a director of Busmar Sidecars. He has been trying to produce his pipe-dream sidecar for three years but has not before been able to find the time.
MotorCycling, November 3rd, 1955
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