Invicta
Black Prince
Invicta
Black Prince
In 1946 a new company appeared using the name Invicta Cars and they produced the Invicta Black Prince. The company was based in Virginia Water in Surrey, and the Black Prince was designed by William Watson, who had previously worked for the pre-war Invicta car company and had also been responsible for designing the very successful S type for Noel Macklin.
The post-war Black Prince also used a Meadows engine, a 3 litre, twin overhead camshaft unit, with three SU carburettors. The suspension was independent front and rear using torsion bars, and controlled by hydraulic dampers. However, instead of a conventional gearbox, it utilised a Brockhouse Hydro-Kinetic Turbo Transmitter, offering an infinite variety of ratios, making it Britain’s first car with fully automatic transmission.
The luxury car was very advanced and extremely complex, but sadly proved to be too expensive in those early post-war years to be successful, and the company closed in 1950, having only made a small handful of cars.