Corgi (welbike)

Corgi (welbike)
98cc air cooled single cylinder two stroke
single speed gear
Corgi (welbike)
Production 1942–1954 at the Excelsior Motor Company Birmingham
and Brockhouse Engineering (Southport) Ltd after WW2
A well known and popular part of the immediate post war scene,
the Corgi scooter was a development of the wartime Welbike,
which had originally been designed for the Special Operations
Executive, at the SOE development centre at The Frythe, near
Welwyn, Hertfordshire.
The prototype Welbikes, designed by Harry Lester under the
directorship of Lieut Col John Dolphin, were not accepted by the
SOE, but nevertheless the Welbike went into production for use
by paratroops, being manufactured by Excelsior, using the Villiers
JDL autocycle engine.
They were first used in the disastrous Arnhem campaign in 1943,
and are known to have been used in the Normandy landings and
North Africa, but the majority of the 3,853 production Welbikes
ended up being used as base runabouts by the three Services.
After the War, the bulk of the survivors were exported to the USA,
where they were sold by a New York department store.
After the War, Brockhouse Engineering (Southport) Ltd., in
conjunction with John Dolphin, went on to develop the Welbike
into the Corgi scooter, powered by an Excelsior Spryt Autocycle
engine, built under licence by Brockhouse. The Corgi went into
production in 1947, initially for export, being sold in North
America as the Indian Papoose - Indian at that-time being part of
the Brockhouse empire - and not reaching the Home market until
early 1948, with some 27,050 being manufactured until the end
of production in October 1954.