Hi Cash, I hadn't realised that " Ingersoll " were still in production. I thought they got taken over by " Alfred Herbert " and ruined by incompetent British management.
Regards Tyrone.
The history is getting a bit distant for me, but as I remember it, Ingersoll were one of the world's best special-purpose machine tool builders in the 60s. As far as I know they didn't try to compete in the low cost general purpose machine tool market (i.e. capstans, smaller production milling machines etc.)
Herbert by contrast (certainly in their Coventry Edgewick plant) were still churning out rather traditional lathes. At about the same time in the 60s, Herbert had acquired BSA-Churchill, but the two businesses were not easy to integrate and BSA sales were not what had been expected. BSA motorcycles were a seperate business by this stage in case you were wondering. The Birmingham and Coventry factories didn't seem to work well together (bit of an understatement).
Herbert Ingersoll was formed to bring Ingersoll's expertise into new market places - i.e. UK, Europe etc. I think most of the capital came from Herbert and they had a majority of the shares. Herbert Ingersoll was a separate business to both of the companies. They built a new pupose designed factory at Daventry (South of Coventry) which was considered something of a showpiece at the time. My impression is that Ingersoll contributed a lot of expertise to this new business, but Herbert were already into a terminal decline. The Daventry factory had significant numbers of NC machine tools, in contrast to Edgewick. The management had a better reputation than the parent Herbert company did (another understatement).
Herbert Ingersoll won a very significant order for a complete transfer line to make the Avenger engine block at the Rootes engine plant at Stoke Aldermoor in Coventry. I worked on this transfer line and I was impressed by the level of automation and the overall engineering (for the time). I rather doubt that Herbert's had much input into this project. I think they also won a few other orders but the sales rather quickly ran dry and the Herbert-Ingersoll company became a significant drain on Herbert, who were at the same time suffering from a lot of semi-obsolete products. I don't think that Herbert Ingersoll ever made a profit, but I can't back that up with anything. The Herbert management was notoriously poor (I had friends who worked there). Bail outs were needed to keep going, but in the end Herberts went bust. I assume Herbert Ingersoll failed at about the same time.
I may have some of the details wrong, please correct if this the case.
My overall view of the whole debacle is that Ingersoll suffered from poor judgement getting into bed with Herberts. Herberts were disfunctional in so many different ways that any joint venture would probably have failed, regardless of who their partners were.
