AJS was the name used for cars and motorcycles made by the Wolverhampton, England company A. J. Stevens Ltd.

Although best known for their motorcycles the company made a few experimental cars with Meadows engines in 1923 but decided not to go into full production. They returned to car making in 1929 with the Nine powered by a 1018 cc side valve Coventry-Climax engine producing 24 bhp and driving through a three speed gearbox. The cars were quite expensive at £210 for the two seater and £320 for the fabric bodied saloon. About 3,300 were made.

Looking for other markets, in 1929 the company started making buses and coaches. The first model was the Pilot with a Meadows engine. This was followed by the Commodore with a Coventry Climax L6 engine and finally by the Admiral. Just over 200 buses were built.

In 1931 A. J. Stevens went bankrupt. The motorcycle assets were bought by the London company Matchless and the cars by Crossley. Crossley incorporated some improvements such as a four speed gearbox and using parts acquired from AJS built about 300 cars between December 1931 and May 1932. Assembly took place in the Stockport factory used by Willys Overland Crossley.

A 1½-litre model was planned, but failed to materialize except to appear on the Willys-Overland-Crossley stand at the 1932 London Motor Show.

The Stevens brothers tried again and restarted the company as Stevens Brothers (Wolverhampton) Ltd to make 3 wheel delivery vans. These used a 588 cc single cylinder engine driving the rear wheels through a 3 speed gearbox and chain drive. The van could carry 5 cwt. It was improved in 1935 with shaft drive and uprated to 8 cwt. The last ones were made in 1936. In 1934 they also produced a new range of motor cycles under the Stevens name. These were made until 1938 after which the company continued as a general engineering business until 1956.

The name eventually ended up with Norton Villiers but when they hit financial problems the rights to manufacture AJS motor cycles was purchased by Fluff Brown who moved operations to Goodworth Clatford near Andover, Hampshire during September 1974.

RACING

In 1939 a 495cc AJS V4 was built to compete against the supercharged BMWs then dominating racing. The bike was a water-cooled and supercharged. In 1939 the dry sump V4 was the first bike to lap the Ulster Grand Prix course at over 100mph. It weighed 405lb. its top speed was 135mph. Then World War II intervened.

At the end of the 40s and start of the 50s, the AJS Porcupine, a 500cc forward facing parallel twin, and the AJS 7R (32 bhp, 350cc OHC single) were being raced alongside their AMC stablemates the Matchless G50 (effectively a 500cc 7R) and by 1951, the Matchless G45 (a 500cc vertical twin). The AJS Porcupine had been designed for supercharging, before the rules changed ending supercharged racing motorcycles, but even so, Les Graham won the 1949 World Championship on an unsupercharged AJS 500cc Porcupine.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "AJS".