Steel from the Clyde: Five Scottish Marques That Belong on the Bo'ness Hill

Every hillclimb has its regulars. At Bo'ness that means pre-war Austins with their cheeky little radiators, a brace of MGs, a Riley or two and something delightfully indiscreet with a V8 shoehorned under a louvred bonnet. All of them wonderful. All of them, with the greatest respect to their owners, built a long way south of the border.

Now stand at the foot of the Kinneil climb and look north-west. Within an hour or so of that view you'll find Alexandria, Anniesland, Bridgeton, Govan and a modest works at Tongland just outside Kirkcudbright. Between them, those five places produced some of the most inventive road cars Britain has ever seen. And barely any of them ever turns a wheel in anger at the Revival.

The Trouble With Being a Museum Piece

Scotland's native motor industry is mostly remembered behind glass. There's a superb Argyll in a collection somewhere, a beautifully restored Arrol-Johnston that comes out for weddings, an Albion lorry that does the rally circuit on a trailer. All worthy, all static.

But a car that never moves is a sculpture. The hill at Bo'ness was built for noise and mud and the smell of hot oil, and the machines that came out of Scottish workshops deserve better than a velvet rope. So here are five, and how I'd go about getting each of them up the climb.

Argyll: The Sleeve-Valve Sensation from Alexandria

Argyll Motors started in Bridgeton in 1899 before decamping to a colossal purpose-built works at Alexandria, on the edge of Loch Lomond. Its party piece was the single-sleeve-valve engine — a beautifully quiet, oddly smooth piece of engineering that was years ahead of its time and a nightmare to keep in fettle a century later.

Argylls were no strangers to long-distance punishment. The marque built its reputation on reliability trials and endurance runs, and a sleeve-valve car pulling hard out of a hairpin would be a genuine novelty at Bo'ness — the sound is somewhere between a sewing machine and a kettle coming to the boil.

Practical notes: sleeve and port wear is the big one, and oil consumption is generous even by pre-war standards. Budget for a rebuild you can't buy off the shelf, and check the lubrication system thoroughly before you think about a timed run.

Arrol-Johnston: Govan's Gentleman's Car

Founded in 1895 by George Johnston with backing from the great bridge-builder Sir William Arrol, Arrol-Johnston is arguably the founding father of Scottish car manufacturing. The company later moved to Heathhall in Dumfries, and its solid, low-revving tourers were the sort of thing a Scottish doctor or provost bought when he wanted something dependable and quietly expensive.

A pre-war Arrol-Johnston on the hill would be the highlight of any paddock. They're heavy, they're long-geared and they need to be driven with sympathy — which is exactly the discipline a narrow, unforgiving estate climb teaches you.

Practical notes: brakes are the priority. Most of these cars left the factory stopping on rear shoes and hope, so a well-sorted period-correct upgrade is money well spent. Check the wooden wheels and bevel drive before anything else.

Galloway: The Little Car With the Big Car Touch

Galloway Motors operated from Tongland, near Kirkcudbright, in the early 1920s as a sister concern to Arrol-Johnston. The light 10/20 and 12/20 models were marketed under a slogan about having the big car touch, and it was a fair claim — these were well-made small cars with proper engineering underneath.

Survivors are genuinely thin on the ground, which is a shame, because a light car is exactly what a hillclimb rewards. Power-to-weight beats power every time up a climb like Kinneil, and a healthy Galloway would embarrass a lot of larger machinery through the twisty bits.

Practical notes: six-volt electrics, gravity or basic pump fuel feed and modest cooling capacity mean you should treat the climb as a series of short efforts rather than one long thrash. Let it breathe between runs.

Albion: Bridgeton's Workhorse That Started as a Car

The Albion Motor Car Company grew out of the Mo-Car Syndicate in Glasgow in 1899, and for its first decade and a half it built proper passenger cars — early dog-cart style machines, then increasingly conventional tourers — before sensibly deciding that lorries and buses were where the money was.

That history makes a pre-1914 Albion car a rare beast indeed, and seeing one climb the hill would be a small event in itself. There's a bonus, too: an Albion flatbed of the 1950s makes an absolutely period-perfect service vehicle. Park the spares on the back of one and the paddock display writes itself.

Practical notes: early Albions are simple but idiosyncratic — expect hand cranking, total-loss lubrication on the oldest examples, and a gearbox that demands a double-declutch. A demonstration run rather than a competitive class is the sensible way in.

Beardmore: Taxis, Aero Engines and a Hill

William Beardmore & Co of Anniesland was one of Glasgow's great engineering empires — ships, armour plate, aero engines and, for a couple of decades, motor cars. Beardmore taxis were a fixture of London streets, and the Precision and 1.5-litre models were properly engineered machines with a reputation for toughness.

Toughness is what you want on a hill. The Kinneil climb is short, sharp and unforgiving of a tired engine, and a Beardmore in decent health would take it in its stride.

Practical notes: these are heavy cars with heavy steering, so tyre pressures and a properly greased front end matter more than a few extra horsepower. Bring a spare magneto if you have one — nobody is lending you one at 8am on a Sunday.

Making It Happen

The mechanics of getting any of these cars to Bo'ness are the same as for any pre-war entry: trailer it in, present it sensibly at scrutineering, have a working extinguisher and a decent spill kit, and talk to the organisers well in advance about which class or demonstration group fits.

Beyond that, it's about owners being willing to use the cars. A Scottish marques class — even a modest one, run as a parade or a non-competitive demonstration — would give these machines the thing they most lack: a reason to be warmed through, driven hard and talked about by people who can hear them coming.

The hill has hosted more exotic metal than most of us will ever own. It has almost never hosted the cars that were built down the road. That's an omission worth fixing, one sleeve valve at a time.