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PEARSONS OF LIVERPOOL
As Pearsons had been one of General Motors major dealers in the north of England, they were asked to help the American company find a new operational assembly plant when the GM factory at Southampton was blitzed in 1940. Pearsons duly obliged and proposed that an old cotton mill at Cuerdon Bamber Bridge near Preston, would be ideally placed for receiving the vehicles that were then being imported. However, in addition, Pearsons quickly established the opportunity to acquire some of the assembly of Canadian Military Pattern vehicles in Liverpool.
GM relocated to Cuerden Mill in Bamber Bridge after their Southampton Plant was bombed on 30th November/1st December 1940. These photographs were taken in the Spring of 1941 at the new General Motors works.
From left to right are Messrs Reginald Cartwright (Managing Director, GM Ltd), G. Lloyd-Dixon of Rootes Ltd, C.S. Allanson (Director, GM Limited), R. Pearson of Pearsons Garage, J. Rundbaken (Rootes), H. H. Amos of GM Ltd, and G. Fone of Northern Counties Engineering Company Ltd.
This view inside part of the fire-damaged Phoenix Safe Works further along Smithdown Lane demonstrates the variety of vehicles handled there in 1945!
On the left is an International Harvester M14 Truck 15-cwt Half Tracked Personnel with the rear of another on the right.
This is the building at 165, Smithdown Lane, which themselves had been very badly damaged in the German Luftwaffe raids on Liverpool over the winter of 1940/1. It shows a GMC three-ton, probably an ex-French order, ACKWX-353 or 21/2-ton CCKW-353 6 x 6 lorries being completely re-built.
Here we have a picture that dates from November 1943, showing trucks being assembled in the corrugated asbestos sheet-clad building that had just been erected on bomb-damaged land between Angela Street and St. Arnaud Street.
The first view shows a line of Truck 15 cwt 4 x 4 Personnel vehicles being assembled, which have been supplied by the White Motor Company of Cleveland, Ohio.
PEARSONS OF LIVERPOOL
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