Although long since departed, Wolseley was one of Britain's foremost car makers throughout the Edwardian period and into the 1920s, even though it was originally founded by Irish-born Frederick York Wolseley in Sydney, Australia in 1887 to manufacture sheep-shearing equipment.

Two years later a subsidiary was set up in Birmingham, England where works manager, Herbert Austin, would be responsible for the first Wolseley motor car, a three-wheeler built on Léon Bollée lines, in 1896.

Early Wolseleys featured horizontal engines, but it was with the arrival of vertical-engined multi-cylinder cars in the Edwardian era that Wolseley earned its reputation for finely engineered, smooth and powerful transport.

By this time, Herbert Austin had left to pursue his own career and his place was taken by John D Siddeley whose own company, taken over by Wolseley in 1904, had been making vertical-engined cars based on the French Peugeot.

Siddeley forged ahead with an ever-expanding range of vertical...