Whatever happened to the Invacar?
For many of the cars featured in this section of PetrolBlog, the spiral into oblivion has been a long and drawn out process. A story of rust and mellow uselessness as the body becomes tatty and the engine grows tired. Not so for this week’s entry. This little car – and it was a little car – had to endure an ending rivalled only by a second-rate horror movie.
On the 30 March 2003, the car could be seen roaming the streets of the UK, bounding along, whistling and seemingly without a care in the world. But on the stroke of midnight, it became the government’s most wanted criminal and would become hunted down like a helpless animal until no more existed.
The recency of 2003 ensures that the car in question is likely to be one of the most ‘modern’ motors to grace the ‘Whatever happened to?’ section of PetrolBlog.
The car is, of course, the Invacar.
Three Lions
The Invacar was one of number of disability cars that were leased to disabled people as part of their disability package. The duck-egg blue paintwork and distinctive styling means that it is also the most well-known and remembered disability cars of all time.
I used to see two on my short walk to school each morning. And my walk was very short, so I had a sense that these things were everywhere. On the contrary, there were rumoured to be around 1,300 of the cars in the UK.
Most of these seemed to be permanently sat on the touchline of football grounds up and down the country. Indeed, a lasting memory of watching football in the 1980s is seeing these just behind the corner flag at each ground. I was always slightly impressed when the rain was pouring down and the owner of the car would be sat blissfully eating a football pie whilst the single wiper cleared the screen.
A forerunner to the modern day corporate box perhaps? Without the prawn sandwiches.
The Three Degrees
Bert Greeves designed the Invacar for his cousin Derry Preston-Cobb. Greeves ran a successful competition motorcycle company. In its final form, the Invacar was built by Thundersley and AC Cars. Yes, the very same company that gave the world the iconic Cobra.
But unlike the famous ‘widow maker’, Mr Shelby hasn’t quite got round to creating a version of the Invacar. Each car was painted in Ice Blue and powered by a 500cc or 600cc Steyr-Puch engine which propelled the car to an unlikely 82mph.
Yep, you read that right – 82 mph. Eighty-flipping-two mph. Incredible. In a car with a fibreglass body and absolutely nothing in the way of creature comforts, it must have had a power-to-weight ratio to rival a BMW M5.
Whether anybody would be mad enough to attempt the top speed is anyone’s guess. If they did, I’m doubtful they’d have lived to tell the tale, as handling and braking would hardly have been a strong point.
Production actually ceased in 1977, but they remained in use until 31 March 2003. The UK government deemed the Invacar to be unsafe and ordered a total destruction of all remaining examples. Some 50 cars a week were being crushed as it became illegal to drive an Invacar on any public road.
A handful of Invacars slipped through the net, some of which are said to have V5 documents. I’ve managed to track down this ‘barn find’ in Scotland which is available to buy should you wish to attempt that claimed 82mph top speed. Offers over £500 will secure a piece of three-wheel history.
Fun Boy Three
As you can imagine, moving footage of the car is in short supply. There were no glossy TV ads for the car. There are, however, a number of videos on YouTube that manage to highlight just how blimmin’ quick these things are off the line. By all accounts, they also have an unlikely amount of cornering ability.
Will I be rushing out to buy one? No. Would I buy a pint for anyone who has achieved 82mph in one? Absolutely.
Thanks to the seller of the Invacar for the use of the images. Also to 3wheelers.com and Peter Rogers for the information.
49 Comments
Part of me wants to salute the people behind the car because I think it’s absolutely fantastic that anyone, able bodied or not got a chance to dirve.
The other part of me wants to squash them all (except 1) because let’s face it the cars were hideous and they could have made them better looking. Just because the poor person who needs to drive them is disabled, doesn’t mean you need to have a disabled design. Get Alfa to design the next one.
The one that didn’t get crushed should be preserved in a museum so we learn not to make that same mistake again.
Agree totally. Suggest better still, they actually ask young talented car designers to come up with the design for the new one. Everyone wins – the designers get a live brief to work on, the users get a better car to drive in and we all get something pleasing to look at. What’s not to like about this idea?!
When the Invacar was a common sight, I used to race motor cycles. derry preston-cobb was sales manager for greaves and one would see him regularly in his wheelchair in the Silverstone paddock. Greaves made a 250cc sports and scrambler engine, used in 250cc racing, and it was rumoured that mr. preston=cobb had one fitted to his invacar. I believe it was possible to enter an invacar whilst remaining in a wheelchair, and drive it from the chair.
Am I the only one who when seeing this for the first time thought ‘Hyabusa’……
Brilliant! I doubt you’re the only one, but I like the way your thinking is heading…add a Viper stripe for maximum effect of course!
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God Help Us!!! I thought these bloody things had been all destroyed. Drop a Busa lump in it…INTERESTING IDEA 🙂
Has to be done! Surprised the Top Gear boys haven’t thought about it…
Scary as it might be i remember going to college in warrington in the 80’s and there was a scrap yard full of invacars just down the road.
God awful cars, dare i say it you have to compare them with the Robin Reliant…….
A surprising number seemed to slip through the net. They were all supposed to be crushed!
Same here, there used to be a Ford dealer which did Motability or whatever it was called back in the 1970’s/80’s. There must have been between 70-80 of them round the back, the newest being P reg (1975-76) and we nicked one and got done by the Rozzers when I was an impressionable 15 year old 🙂
Ha! There aren’t many people who can honestly say they stole an Invacar and got caught by the police! I’ll look out for you on Police Camera Action!
I’d like to have seen them raced on oval tracks like the Robin!Gr
On the Tamar there was an Invicar garage, well I didnt know they were called invicars, we only knew them by a name that today isnt ‘pc’ but ended in chariots. Anyway while bobbing up and down the river there were dozens of those things, now in the space occupied by the saling club, many of them stacked on their tailight. As to where they all went, I thinlk on a double eclipse, full moon, low pressure, spring tide they all got swept off to sea. I hope so. Otherwise one or two may reappear. Begs the question……why o why didnt the owners paint the darn things some other colour? Where was their imagination?
Ha! So you mean to tell me there are dozens of these things on the sea bed around Plymouth!? That’s awesome. I feel a diving expedition coming on!
On reflection it seems seriously unfair that these were mandated off the road. How can these be any less safe than a vintage motorbike?
I too remember one which always seemed to be round the local playing fields. Weird.
Good point.
I’m thinking they should bring them back as some kind of probationary vehicle for learner drivers. Better still, use it as a deterrent for reckless driving for young hooligans! Mess up and this’ll be your punishment! 😉
Reading all the blurb about them being dangerous etc I have never seen any accident figures for them ?
My father drove these cars. Because they had a glass body is a very lightweight. Not good in high winds. He reckoned that if you had an accident in one of them they were designed to finish you off! Which they nearly did three times. The last one scaring him so badly that you got my mum to drive him everywhere.
Heating in them was terrible. It wasn’t supposed to have passengers but when I was a small child, he would take me on little trips and I’d sit on the floor with a blanket and was told to keep my head down increase the police saw me. 😆
The cars were not leased to the disabled , they were free , hence built as cheaply as possible by the Government .
Steering & brakes were excellent , Girling brakes and Mini wheels & tyres .
No problems with speed , exceptionally stable , the problem with was the three wheels , get a wheel jammed against the kerb and they tried to turn full circle and tipped over .
The main difficulty was the drivers , not given proper training , got a car licence , your OK , of you go . despite having severe handicaps and not having driven for years .
What the cars did do was get a lot of people out of their houses who , at one time could not.
They were great fun machines to drive,quite nippy and very maneuverable, the main downside was driving them in a high cross wind as the front end was very light, one front wheel and hollow front nose section meant an unexpected gust of wind would catch the side like a giant hand shoving you across the road, somewhat hairy when it caught you by surprise for an able bodied driver, hate to think what a nightmare it could have been for a disabled driver.
Best model was the standard model which was handlebar control design, meaning it had the steering response of a motor cycle and sidecar.
No official sources for this story, but:
I used to work with a couple of ex- freelance photographers. Apparently one of their number was disabled and qualified for one of these, and regularly took it on motorways doing 70-odd mph. He was regularly stopped by the police because they assumed anyone mad enough to drive one of those things that fast had probably nicked it….
Regardless of the lack of official sources, I want to believe this is true.
Great story.
You may possibly find the fellow was regularly stopped by the cops because even back then it was an offence to drive an invalid carriage on a motorway,i was possibly one of a minority that as an official tester of these machines allowed me one time to travel a distance legally up a motorway using trade plates which entitled a person to do so, indeed more than once i was passed by the police who recognized this fact and never hassled me throughout the journey.
I’ve never heard of the Invacar, but it is fascinating. Too bad not much is known of it. 🙁
One for sale on Car & Classic (28th August 2012): http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C327943
When I was a young calf roaming the streets of west London, therer was a famous character in Hounslow known as Jimmy the Sp*z, who was about 4’6″ tall and walked with 2 sticks. He would drive his Inva to the Bell at opening time, and work his way down the High Street, visiting every pub along the way. By last orders he would usually be in the Duke of Cambridge, violently drunk and picking fights with the biggest yobs he could find. I was once attacked by him…he flew at me in a whirl of sticks and whisky breath, and I was laughing so much he cracked me over the trunk a few times before hobbling out of the pub ranting and hollering. He would end up getting into his little blue box and tearing back up the road, weaving from one side to the other and mounting both pavements. The local cops nicked him several times but never actually prosecuted him out of sympathy for his condition. One night however, he rolled the thing outside McDonalds and that was his lot…he was nicked and banned. Poor old bugger, he didn’t last long once his wheels were gone, and he died some time around 1983.
These cars really are an experience, I recently bought one woo 848s it’s great , what a car it is , you really do have to drive one . Mine has the tiller and really if you can drive one then you. Really can drive anything , I had 55mph out of it the other day and dam nerar shit myself , if anyone else has one they want to sell then call me 07811798408 julian
When I was a kid, there was an Invacar garage in Portsmouth. I used to walk past it a lot. I moved away before 2003, but I did notice the building is now derelict last time I went past. Shame. The garage seemed to always be busy.
Wonder if the Invacar is still there?!
March 16th 2013: Invacar for sale:
http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C348807
About 50 years ago i can remember my dad having a invacar reg OO272 blue and white, in my younger days i would borrow it to have a ride around even in winter if you put the one wheel drive in the gutter where the grit was you could get any where, good fun and times.
Love it!
Managed to track down the video that was originally included in this feature. Check out the off-the-line pace and cornering ability!
It’s like a fun-size Tesla. Of sorts.
I’m looking for a nice gwo invacar in blue cash waiting for the right one must have V5 as I am disabled now ,a lovely man I knew had one as I was his paper boy lol . I remembered how much I loved his invacar ,I so much would like to own one not just for me but the memories to. Please get in touch if you could help
07787408681 text or call
Many thanks .
Good luck.
They occasionally come up for sale on eBay and Car & Classic. http://www.carandclassic.co.uk
I’ve also seen a couple for sale at classic car auctions. Will keep my eyes open for you.
The loss of the Invacar contract seems to have been one of the factors that caused AC to quit the car business in the early 80s. Even allowing for the hideous (to a small company) costs involved in getting the 3000 ME past type approval and into production, AC was a profit-making concern until shortly after Invacar production ceased. Alas, they made a loss in both 1979 and 1980 and the rest is, well, history.
My dad had one of these, and its even worse predecessor. It was all he was allowed to drive as he was disabled. Shocking things. Incredibly unstable round corners. He turned it over once. A couple of guys came over and flipped it back onto its wheels and my dad drove it home. This thing could make you disabled twice over.
My Mum got one, it must have been 1964 or 5. She drove it once with the instructor then parked in the “off site” garage we rented.
I drove it up and down the “10 foot” and once or twice on the road (I was 15). “Was it push to got left or was that right!?”
I then went to the RAF, next I remember she had a Ford Z car automatic, hand controls and vacuum air breaks….
Did Invacar ever produce a 4-wheeled version? A pity such cars and UK microcars in general were restricted to 3-wheels that in some cases did not even feature a reverse gear!
My cousin(SADLY now deceased) had oNE and he had a little plywood seat beside the main seat to fit a passanger. Remember coming back from Weyms-bay to Clydebank one night. He drove like a demon up and down all the back roads on the way home, I absolutely loved it.
They were known universally as Spaz Wagons. A local lad nicknamed Tosh fell out of a tree and broke his spine, late 1960’s it would have been. He had one of these and tuned the nuts off the Villiers lump. High compression, porting job, expansion chamber, the works. Mental as anything.
Despite the wording in the article which states it’s illegal to drive an invacar on the road, that’s not true I don’t think, as there’s a guy on YouTube called hubnut who’s recently recomissioned one of these that spent 14 years off the road, passed its first MOT since then roughly this time last year ish, all legal and he’s covered hundreds of miles in it.
We love Ian’s Invacar, or TWC.
It was effectively illegal to own and run an Invacar, but the rules have changed.
its a very common misconception that the invalid carriage was illegal to own privately and drive on the road, but thats simply not true
invalid carriages where never actually banned from the road in 2003, its just the fact that 99% of the invalid vehicles on the road by 2003 where owned by the government and they as the owners of the cars decided withdraw and crush all the ones that they owned which happened to be almost all on the road at the time, but the vehicle type was never banned by the government from the roads or such (that would of been very unfair to those who owned private ones for example, you could outright buy an invalid carriage new privately direct from the manufacture back in the day if you really wanted too! but as you could also get one free from the government, very few people did, so privately owned invalid carriages where always very rare)
but as 99% where government owned it made it look like they where banned from the road because they all suddenly vanished if that makes sense 🙂 its also worth noting all surviving Invalid carriages that where once owned by the government are no longer owned by the government since the invalid vehicle service ceased to exist since 2004, and have always been fully legal to own and drive on the road since then
its also a common misconception that you have to change the body type on the V5 from “invalid vehicle” to “Tricycle”, it stems from the fact that they where taxed as “disabled” because the users where disabled, but if your not disabled then you have to change the tax class, and before the historic tax class was introduced, invalid carriages fell into the Tricycle tax class like a reliant robin, many people took this to also mean you had to change the body type to “Tricycle” as well which as I said you dont you have to do, you only have to change the Tax class not the body type 🙂
all this means if you do own an invalid carriage you want to return to the road, all you have to do is apply for the V5, and once you have the V5, change the tax class from “Disabled” to historic 🙂 (you dont have to do anything)
(and if you do own an invalid carriage of some kind do feel free to contact me, im a big invalid carriage enthusiast (focusing on Model 70’s) and am heavily involved with invalid carriage “scene” if you want to call it that!,
so im always interested to hear about ones people own! especially as I keep a running list of all Surviving AC and Invacar Mode 70’s)
for those wondering the last government owned invalid vehicle to be withdrawn, was an Invacar Model 70, TJN352R which was withdrawn on the 14th of October 2004, which is happily persevered in the coventry motor museum now 🙂
I can confirm the fact that these little cars were sent to scrappers, as in the late 1980’s when working in a local garage in Devon we used to have the contract for maintaining the local governments fleet, when in for service it was more regular than not that the vehicle would be condemned as being uneconomical to repair, and then once this was confirmed the vehicle was taken outside and destroyed, yes destroyed, this was done with a sledge hammer, simple as that. In my time working with these little cars there was once an incentive that the Government employed that even today makes me chuckle, but really it should make you shudder. Fire extinguishers were fitted as a standard, and they were initially of an aerosol type, very small and really not much use, the incentive was to fit a new latest style fire extinguisher that would be more suited to cope with any, and all fires that might exist, the fire extinguisher was the green Halon extinguisher, they were very much larger than the original, but still hand size, to be replaced on all vehicles, so all vehicles were recalled and this new upgrade was carried out, but within months the Halon extinguisher was making the headlines, this because the Halon extinguisher did work, but it worked so well it extinguished any thing in its surrounding area, because it removed all oxygen, and therefore had to be removed again with great urgency, I remember having a number of these extinguishers until they were banned some time after, also kept a couple of the dynastarts as these intrigued me as today you may see this being used on the most modern of cars.
ekkk, thats a lot of messing up from the government
Why did we have to crush them? could have just left them for people to keep
My father drove these cars. Because they had a glass body is a very lightweight. Not good in high winds. He reckoned that if you had an accident in one of them they were designed to finish you off! Which they nearly did three times. The last one scaring him so badly that you got my mum to drive him everywhere.
Heating in them was terrible. It wasn’t supposed to have passengers but when I was a small child, he would take me on little trips and I’d sit on the floor with a blanket and was told to keep my head down increase the police saw me. 😆
I remember as a nipper in the 1970’s these things on the roads everywhere in London. You could hear them coming a mile away they sounded unique. Like a bag of spanners going round in a washing machine. The older lads called them Spazz Chariots and threw bricks at them. Several times I saw them being driven in a highly dangerous manner as if the driver was drunk. Once in the 1980’s I had the honour of seeing one of them get sandwiched between two cars at a contraflow and pushed up between them until it was perched above them because neither driver wanted it to get in front. The whole street was laughing and horn honking. Those were the days. Those were the days.