Wolseley ‘Baby’ X Type

Herbert Austin was responsible for Wolseley entering the automobile business in the late 1800s (the company’s origins lay with sheep-shearing equipment in Australia), and the Baby X is one of his last designs, before leaving to start his own company. This was not a standard model, however, but the result of a one-off order for 52 vehicles of a particular design, from a company in India. For whatever reasons, only 12 were ever delivered leaving the company to dispose of the remainder.

After Austin’s departure, Wolseley moved upmarket towards the luxurious end of the market and during WWI built military vehicles and aero engines (our S.E.5a has a Wolseley Viper engine). During the 1920s, however, it struggled to be profitable and in 1927 was acquired by William Morris, who successfully incorporated the name into his own range of models. It eventually disappeared in the days of British Leyland.

About this vehicle

This car was bought by the Shuttleworth family in 1929 (for fifteen shillings) and seems to have been used predominantly by Dorothy as a general run-around. She did, nevertheless, complete the London to Brighton run of 1930 in the car, despite it technically being not quite old enough (the regulations stipulate all entries to the Brighton run must be pre-1905). It has a 5hp, single cylinder horizontal, engine, with chain drive to a two-speed gearbox.

In 1935 the car was swapped for the 1899 Marot Gardon quadricycle, which is still in the Collection, and it eventually ended up in the Moretonhampstead motor museum in Devon. Shuttleworth purchased the vehicle in 2025, funded by the SVAS, bringing it back into the Collection. It is one of the rarest of Wolseleys, believed to be only one of two surviving models.