1904 Turner Miesse

I took this photograph in a very wet Manchester at the Lancashire Automobile Club's Manchester to Blackpool Veteran and Vintage Car Run in June 1980.

I no longer have the programme of this event, but this is a 1904 Turner Miesse steam car which it seems was, and still is, owned by the Black Country Living Museum. The Turner Manufacturing Company originated as an engineering business around the middle of the 19th century in a small workshop in Wolverhampton. In 1902 the company’s owner, James Burns Dumbell, obtained the manufacturing rights for the Belgian Miesse steam car from the Brussels based company of J. Miesse. The Miesse steam cars were a first class design and proved to be very popular in Europe. At this time petrol engines were not always reliable and so there was a place in the market, albeit briefly, for steam cars. The car had a three cylinder, single acting engine (steam only admitted above the piston) with a paraffin-fired flash boiler.