page_title: D. Napier & Son
section_title: Interwar period
hierarchical_section_title: D. Napier & Son / History / Interwar period
caption_attribution_description: English: A 1920 Napier Type 75 TT(DVLA) first registered January 1920, manufactured 1920, 6220 cc
context_page_description: D. Napier & Son Limited was a British engineering company best known for its luxury motor cars in the Edwardian era and for its aero engines throughout the early to mid-20th century.
  Napier was founded as a precision engineering company in 1808 and for nearly a century produced machinery for the financial, print and munitions industries. In the early 20th century it moved for a time into internal combustion engines and road vehicles before turning to aero engines. Its powerful Lion dominated the UK market in the 1920s and the Second World War era Sabre produced 3500 hp in its later versions. Many world speed records on land and water, as well as the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest fighter planes, were powered by Napier engines. During the Second World War the company was taken over by English Electric, and engine manufacture eventually ceased. Today, Napier Turbochargers is a subsidiary of the American company Wabtec.
context_section_description: By the end of the war, military production had tailed off and the Lion was still barely in use.
  In 1919 civilian car production was recommenced. The T75 motor car would be Napier's last. Designed by A. J. Rowledge (who left for Rolls-Royce in 1921), its engine was a 40–50 hp 377 cu in (6,178 cc) (101.6 mm × 127 mm or 4.00 in × 5.00 in) alloy six with detachable cylinder head, single overhead camshaft, seven-bearing crankshaft, dual magneto and coil ignition, dual plugs, and Napier-SU Carburettor. Coachwork was by Cunard, by then a subsidiary. 187 were built in all by 1924, and Napier quit car production with a total of 4,258 built. The car was very expensive, costing about the same as a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost and in the early 1920s sales were slow. The last car was sold in 1924.
  The Lion was by now becoming a best-seller for the company, which eventually dropped all the other aero-engines. The Lion went on to be adapted for land and water, to set the Land Speed Record in Malcolm Campbell's Napier-Campbell Blue Bird of 1927 and Campbell-Napier-Railton Blue Bird 0f 1931 and Henry Segrave's Golden Arrow of 1931 and later in John Cobb's Napier-Railton and Railton Mobil Special, which held the record from 1939–64.
  In the 1930s the introduction of much larger and more powerful aero-engines from other companies ended sales of the Lion. Napier quickly started work on newer designs, building on experience gained on the X style 16-cylinder, 1,000 hp (746 kW) Cub, used in the Blackburn Cubaroo single-engined bomber of the 1920s, and the resulting later 16-cylinder Rapier and 24-cylinder Dagger were both air-cooled H-block designs. Neither the Rapier nor the Dagger proved very reliable, due to poor cooling of the rearmost cylinders, and even the Dagger's 1,000 hp (750 kW) was less than its competitors' offerings when shipped.
  As Lion sales faded, an attempt was also made to buy the bankrupt Bentley company in 1931 but Napier was outbid at the last minute by Rolls-Royce. The last vehicle project was a three-wheeled tractor-trailer goods vehicle, but rather than produce this itself, the design was sold to Scammell, which made several thousand.
caption: 1920 Type 75 TT
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