The Invicta Company's origins go back to the year 1924 when Noel Macklin and Oliver Lyle, both of whom already had motor industry experience, got together to create a car combining American levels of flexibility and performance with European quality and roadholding.

Like the contemporary Bentley, the Invicta was designed by men with a personal background of competition motoring and both were produced to an exemplary standard.

Price was only a secondary consideration, a factor that contributed largely to both firms' failure to weather the Depression years of the early 1930s.

Like Bentley, Invicta struggled against rising costs and falling sales, the final car leaving the factory, appropriately enough, on Friday the 13th of October 1933, though a handful of cars was assembled at the company' service depot in Flood Street, Chelsea between 1934 and 1936.

In all, its is estimated that by then approximately 1,000-or-so Invictas of all types had been produced.

There was a half-hearted at...