Perry Motor Company Ltd., Rushey Lane, Tyseley, Birmingham. 1913-1917.
Brothers James and Stephen Perry founded Perry and Company London in 1824 to make steel nibbed pens, sold under the Perryian name. Stephen's son Joseph became managing director and diversified the business to supplying components to the bicycle industry, but by 1896 the bicycle boom was over.
James William Bayliss, who had worked for his father's bicycle company Bayliss-Thomas, was given three years to make the bicycle component department pay. One customer at the time was the Oxford bicycle manufacturer William Morris.
In 1898 an extension was added to the Lancaster Street premises and by 1907 the business was doing so well that an 11 acre (45,000 m²) site was acquired at Rushey Lane, Tyseley, Birmingham. Car production started at Tyseley in early 1913 and continued until 1916/17 when the Great War intervened. In December 1918 the Perry Motor Company was liquidated and the assets, including jigs, tools and spares, (but not the name), were bought by Cecil Bayliss and Arthur Edward Wiley who formed a new company, Bayliss Wiley, to manufacture bicycle components in 1919. The tooling for the four-cylinder car was bought by A Harper, Sons and Bean who were to market it under their own name.
Cecil Bayliss died in 1969.
Possibly only three Perry light cars survive, one in the UK, one in India and one in New Zealand. This survival rate is not surprising as production only lasted a few years
