The obscure scooter club: The Dunkley Whippet.

Via: icenicam

This machine, described as a 'Scooterette', had first been exhibited the previous year at the Earls Court Show in November 1956, branded as the Mercury Whippet 60 and painted in Eggshell Light Blue. Though sales leaflets were printed and circulated to the trade, the machine never progressed beyond the show model under the Mercury badge; however Dunkley did sell a number of their early Whippets finished in the same colour, presumably using up the paint?

W H Dunkley established as a perambulator manufacturer at Jamaica Row, Birmingham from 1874. Versatility was the key to survival in Victorian times and a catalogue of 1880 illustrates their imagination, "Prams, rocking horses, see-saws, pedal tricycles, hobby-horse tricycles, mail carts, steam circuses & roundabouts with organ complete"! In 1886 they commenced production of a series of 'gas cars', which came equipped with a rubber tube for refilling off gas street lamps!

The Whippet's main pressed steel frame elements were of Italian origin, but it's difficult to be sure of the exact source since several manufacturers seem to have used them, Peripoli and Bianchi being mooted as favourites. Further chassis additions to adapt mounting of the engine and headstock bore all the hallmarks of Dunkley's industrial grade handiwork. The front forks and petrol tank were common parts to Mercury's Mercette, a moped powered by a variant uf the Dunkley engine, which appeared much earlier in 1955, though Dunkley continued using these cycle components after Mercury's collapse in March 1958, so presumably Dunkley were actually making them?

Dunkley's path was paved with bankruptcies, but the characteristic script logo plainly carries across history from the 1920s, through cars, motor cycles and prams, to the scooters and light motor cycles of the late '50s. Somehow, they always bounced back, until spring of 1959 when it was announced that Dunkley Products Ltd had been taken over by M G Holdings Ltd, who advised the further acquisition of Dayton Cycles in May 1959, and that Dunkley production was being transferred to the Park Royal site. Despite encouraging propaganda claims issued by the new management, it seemed little more than an asset stripping exercise and building out of stock, as the Dunkley range was dropped at the end of 1959.

There are very few known surviving examples of the Popular, the Dunkley register recording only 3 complete and viable machines, a couple of ruinous wrecks, and an odd few spare engines. Popular engine numbers are indicated by Glass's Index starting from serial 4036 and frame number 321 in August 1958. Closing records from production in Dunkley's disrupted final phase never seem to have come to light, so only register entries can give some indication as to how many Populars were actually made, the highest recorded engine serial being 4751, suggesting around some 800 machines completed."