Unsung heroes: the Invacar

Today's unsung hero was a common (if not universally popular) sight but has been gone from Britain's roads for over a decade: the Invacar Model 70 invalid carriage that was once the government's preferred option for the provision of motoring to the disabled and seemed to be a fixture pretty much everywhere. While most older vehicles have disappeared gradually due to natural attrition, the Invacar's demise was much more sudden and literally a case of "here today, gone tomorrow", having been outlawed overnight and quickly scrapped almost to the point of extinction. It arguably outlived its usefulness and was no longer appropriate, and was killed off in favour of much better options, but the country's roads just aren't the same without its distinctive presence.

Any colour you like as long as it's blue. Who remembers these buzzing around?
(By Charles01 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

The Invacar story began in 1948 when motorcycle builder Bert Greeves converted one of his bikes into a crude form of motorised wheelchair for his paralysed cousin Derry Preston-Cobb. With the formation of the NHS and so many disabled ex-servicemen in need of transport, Greeves and Preston-Cobb saw an opportunity and approached the government for support, setting up Invacar Ltd in Thundersley, Essex, to manufacture the vehicles for the Ministry of Health. These early examples were little more than motorised bath-chairs with no creature comforts whatsoever, but over the years the invalid carriage evolved with proper enclosed metal or fibreglass bodywork. The Invacar wasn't the only vehicle available under the government scheme, alternatives including the Tippen Delta and the AC Acedes, but it was the most numerous and best known, and the name soon became a generic term for all invalid carriages. 

The scary 'spaz chariot'

It was never possible to buy an Invacar as they were built exclusively for the government and given to qualifying drivers by the DHSS on indefinite free-of-charge leases as part of their disability benefit. This meant anyone who drove one of these little blue trikes was instantly identifiable as being disabled, and they soon became the butt of jokes and earned the rather cruel nickname of 'spaz chariots' - so much for equality and social inclusion, but I suppose an Invacar was much better than the alternative of no mobility at all. The policy of making a vehicle exclusively for the disabled rather than providing suitable adaptations of existing cars may seem odd, but is explained by Sir Bert Massie, a former invalid carriage user who is now a governor for the Motability scheme:

"The government didn't see these as cars... they saw them as a prosthetic. There was a strange logic to their thinking. They saw the role of the NHS as being there to get you mobile. If you were not disabled, you'd be doing that with your legs. So, if you were disabled, and couldn't do that, they gave you a one-person invalid carriage as a leg replacement to get you from A to B."  

An Invacar parked at the roadside, once a common sight in most towns.
(By Mr.choppers (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons)

The Invacar was a simple, cheap and easy to manufacture design, and to further cut costs there was no choice of colour, the fibreglass always being impregnated with a powder blue pigment. Nonetheless, each example was individually built to order to meet its recipient's own specific needs, there being over 50 different control layout options available. The most numerous, for those without use of their legs, was motorbike-style handlebar steering incorporating a brake lever and twist-grip throttle, but other popular configurations included left- or right-handed tillers for drivers who were only able to use one arm, and some did have conventional steering wheels. Driving one must have been a lonely experience though, as carrying passengers was strictly forbidden and a plaque on the dashboard provided a constant reminder of the fact.

Early Invacars used small Villiers motorcycle engines, but when these were discontinued a Steyr-Puch unit of 500 and later 600cc was adopted. The mechanical layout of older examples was rather unconventional, the rear-mounted engine powering the single front wheel via a chain- or belt-driven CVT gearbox (which allowed it to achieve the same speeds in reverse!), but the Model 70 was rear-wheel drive using Fiat driveshafts. It was clothed in a simple rounded fibreglass body with large sliding doors, a single central seat and space on either side for a folded wheelchair. Despite its other nickname of 'mobile roadblock', the Invacar was no slouch: the 600 was capable of a heady 80mph but, being rather flimsy and unstable with brakes and steering that didn't really do anything at that speed, it took a very brave or foolhardy driver to achieve this. With a bit of simple tuning, as some current owners are finding out, it could go even faster, a frankly terrifying thought!

The Cobra connection

Any car lover worth his or her salt has surely heard of the mighty AC Cobra, but may be stunned to realise the very same company also made the Invacar, a vehicle as far removed from the Cobra as it is possible to get! Production of the Model 70, the last and most familiar type, was shared between AC Cars in Surrey and Invacar Ltd, and over 20,000 were built by the two firms from 1971 to 1977, the Motability scheme being introduced the following year to provide a new alternative for disabled drivers. The Invacar factory was managed throughout by Greeves and Preston-Cobb, and employees were reputedly warned for their own safety never to get involved in a race with the latter as he was extremely competitive and the severity of his injuries meant he felt no pain and thus had no fear!

The AC Cobra. Not remotely like an Invacar (although this one seems to be the same colour) but a much closer relative than you might expect.
(By Stahlkocher (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Taking delivery of an Invacar must have been an interesting experience: you collected it not from a garage but from the local hospital as you would crutches or a wheelchair, and if you could drive it around the hospital car park they would let you on the road without taking any formal test. Back in the 1990s when I was growing up, Invacars could still be seen in healthy numbers and made a very distinctive if commonly ridiculed sight. They became a staple feature of football matches, which usually featured a row of them parked just behind the touchlines so their occupants could enjoy the game from the comfort of their vehicles. My dad recalls coming across a broken-down example on a country lane, its driver having been stranded for several hours unable to get out and find help, so he was extremely grateful for the assistance, and I'm sure a disabled neighbour had an Invacar at one point before upgrading to a Motability car.

End of the road

Use of Invacars had been in decline thanks to the growing success of Motability, which gave disabled drivers a grant allowing them to purchase a suitably-adapted proper car of their choice. However, around 200 die-hard users clung on to theirs until the end and were very reluctant to let go of them, and many more remained stockpiled in government warehouses. Production had ceased on completion of the final DHSS contract in 1977 so by 2003 all Invacars in existence were over 25 years old and maintenance (provided free of charge by the government) was becoming costly.

More significantly though, there were serious concerns over the safety of these ageing and flimsy machines, which were prone to tipping over in high winds and could occasionally catch fire; new EU regulations required them to be approved under the Motorcycle Single Vehicle Approval Scheme, which they had no hope of complying with. Thus, at a stroke on 31 March 2003, invalid carriages were declared illegal for road use, and they disappeared almost instantly thanks to a massive programme of reclaiming the remaining examples and scrapping them at the rate of 50 per week, together with the stockpile of spare parts. Being so small and mostly fibreglass though, these Invacars can't have been worth a great deal to the scrapmen, and this is possibly why some never actually got broken up.

This older Mark 12 escaped scrapping and joined the Stondon Motor Museum. Rumour has it that it's now in the USA.

   
A handful of Invacars did manage to survive the mass scrappage and escape into the hands of private owners. While many are museum pieces, a few have actually returned to the road as they are now legal if reclassified as tricycles, and most are now owned by able-bodied enthusiasts. I was surprised to learn that British invalid carriages also have a cult following as novelty items among some American collectors, so further examples have been exported to the USA and one that appeared at auction there last year sold for over $4000! There is even a thriving society, the Invalid Carriage Register, to promote interest in the type and help to keep the remaining examples in existence. Whoever would have thought in their heyday that these horrible little 'spaz chariots' would ever be considered cult classics?

There is no doubt that Motability is a much better solution and gives disabled drivers greater equality and social inclusion, but the Invacar has its place in history and successfully met a genuine need. Although widely derided and a relic of the past that is inappropriate by modern standards, in its day it did an awful lot of good for British society. Not only did it achieve its aim of giving the disabled valuable mobility and freedom, all without any cost to them, but it was also built in Britain and provided gainful employment to British workers (many of whom were themselves disabled) over a long period. I remember the Model 70 as a familiar sight in my childhood but haven't seen one since that fateful day in 2003, and I must admit to a feeling of hope that one day I may encounter one of the few surviving examples and be able to admire it in all its baby blue three-wheeled glory.