Bean Cars History

Dad was Bean’s chief Engineer and had been sent to Australia in November 1923 with the prototype Bean 13.9 HP, (nick-named ‘The Scarlet Runner’) to promote the vehicles here. In June 1924, he, Birtles and a fellow named Ellis drove it from Sydney to Darwin & back – the first North-South double-crossing of the continent by car. Dad returned to England just after this, when he was appointed Bean’s Australian agent, returned here by April 1925 to marry my mother.
This double crossing was quite a celebrated feat at the time, and of course the company was keen to capitalise on the publicity by supplying Birtles with a modified Bean (‘Sundowner’) to attempt a record run from Darwin to Sydney in October 1926; followed by his drive from London to Sydney, leaving London 19/10/1927. However the Company was by this time very poorly managed, and was failing, hastened by their introduction of the disastrous series of Hadfield-Beans, remarkably poorly designed and executed vehicles.
The first pictures attached show the 13.9 Bean on the 1924 Australian Alpine trial (No. 33), then afterwards still with the trial dust & dirt, with my mother ‘driving’; Dad is leaning forward in the rear seat. Dad with his Bean coupe in London, 1925, and him also with the rear axle out of the 13.9 during the 1924 Sydney-Darwin-Sydney run. Apparently crown wheels were the achilles heel of these Beans.
The second raw repeats 2 of the above, and shows the car at a telegraph station on the road South between Darwin & Alice Springs – 1924: rear mudguards are missing by this time. Birtles was a driver who would “crash through or crash”, and was quite merciless with his vehicles. The 3rd shows the car as somewhat cruelly loaded up for one leg of the 1924 run. Dad faces the camera.



 

The Beans of A Harper, Sons & Bean Ltd had no connection with Sunbeam, which started to make cars in 1899, having commenced in 1887 making enamelware & bicycles. Bean’s first car emerged in 1919, being a worked-over Perry 11.9 HP, having been ironfounders, forgemasters, machine toolmakers & component suppliers since 1826. Mr Bean of immortal TV fame could well have done a better job of managing the Company than the team which sent them down in the late 1920s!
The pic at Elsey Station (near Katherine) shows the grave of ‘The Maluka’, one of the men written about in the famous early Australian book: “We of the Never-Never” by Mrs Aeneas Gunn, whose husband owned the station from about 1902. The Station was only the 3rd taken up in Australia’s Northern Territory, in 1888, and has since been given back to the Aboriginal tribe which had lived thereabouts. Dad wouldn’t have known of this – the instigation for maintaining the grave would have come from Birtles.
The last pic at Bulli Pass was taken after the car returned to Sydney; Dad & my mother then immediately drove it home to Melbourne, with Mum’s parents & John Good (Bean Export manager) in an Arrol-Johnston.

       

Bean @ Kiandra, 03/1924 Alpin001        Bean @ Melbourne 04/1924

Bean @ Camooweal 06/1924

Bean @ Alice Springs 07/1924   Bean @ Boulia 06/1924   Bean @ Bulli Pass 08/1924

  Bean @ Elsey Station 06_24