When you think of car manufacturers in Derby, Paramount wouldn’t be top of your list, but for a brief moment in history these cars were made in Derbyshire. Which is funnily enough, where we’re testing this today at the Great British Car Journey.

Now with 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.

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.

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.

And that brings us to 1950, where the Burton Daily Mail ran a piece in its paper on January 11th 1950 with the two men standing alongside their new roadster creation outside nearby fancy location, Bretby Hall.

However, despite the initial enthusiasm of the pair,
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.

It was side valve powered car which was debuted to the world in that January 1950 press piece.

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 semielliptical springs and then finished with Girling Hydromechanical 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.

However, this roaring start of a grand new design debuted outside a grand location didn’t lead to the success the motormad pair had hoped for. The company sold around 10 cars, this one included, from their Swadlincote base before the assets of Paramount motors were sold in 1951. The buyers, Meynell motors also based in Derbyshire, made some changes to the car and produced a further 12.

Sadly, this didn’t give the car the Midas touch it needed and the company went under a mere 12 months after acquiring the assets from Sam and Bill.

Undeterred by the failings of the first two companies to handle the development and running of Paramount motors, the assets were then acquired by Paramount Cars of Leighton Buzzard. The company replaced the early side valve engine with the nipper 1500 engine from the Consul, but this and a hard top made the car so expensive it outpriced the Consul it had borrowed the engine from!

By 1956 the party was over and the company came to close, with 26 cars in stock and not a single buyer to show for them.

Across the entire lifespan of the company, it is estimated there were between 70 and 80 cars made. There are figures ranging from 72 to 78 but all in all an utter financial failing for a design which could’ve been so much more in the right set of hands.