The eldest of Harry Ferguson’s siblings, Joseph Bell Ferguson, also had a remarkable career. Many owners of classic British cars in the U.S. are aware of his fabled New York City car dealership, a young Ralph Lauren lusted after the Morgan roadsters spied through its windows, and the Museum of Modern Art’s famous acquisition of a Cisitalia 202 coupe in 1951 was inspired by a curator who’d spotted one of these rare ‘self-moving sculptures’ in the showroom. But the history of the dealership and its roots in the early days of motoring are not well known.

When he completed his engineering apprenticeship in 1901 Joseph Bell Ferguson joined friends in a pioneering garage business in Belfast. Two years later JB, as he was known, set up on his own as J.B. Ferguson. He established an excellent reputation and opened a branch in Dublin.

A limited liability company formed in 1907 and with the additional capital gained, JB converted a large building in Belfast into the UK’s biggest garage in 1908. It housed a big showroom for new and used cars and motorcycles, offices, and a service department. Servicing vehicles was JB’s focus, but he also aimed to sell the best cars at every price point, up to, and including, Rolls Royces. The company also hired cars, offered driving instruction, and operated a motor bus service. A coachbuilding workshop serving everything from commercial vehicles to Rolls Royces followed when two floors were added in 1911. A local rival bought the business in 1921 and closed it soon after World War Two. Fergus Furniture Ltd., which grew out of the coachbuilding workshop during the war, survived until 1977.

A montage of early views of the motor depot interior and exterior.

Auto aspirations

In addition to his brother Harry Ferguson, JB apprenticed younger brother John Victor Stanley Ferguson. Harry built his plane at the motor depot while JB was visiting the U.S. looking in vain for a serious competitor to the Model T Ford. While there, JB visited automobile factories and was determined to produce a car himself, a vehicle free of the many faults noted in the cars he serviced. Christened the Fergus, it was a sophisticated and well-engineered machine intended to be of Rolls Royce-like quality but easier for an owner to maintain. It had a 2.5 litre motor with overhead valves, innovative suspension, and lubrication points  reduced from the usual seventy or so to just ten. The Fergus was prototyped in 1914 but the First World War made it impossible to manufacture the car in Ireland, so JB (who was a pacifist) relocated to the U.S. taking the only completed Fergus car and the two available chassis with him. In 1915 he exhibited a chassis at a New York motor show and demonstrated the car to attract investors, incorporated Fergus Motors of America, and in 1916 established a modest factory in Newark, New Jersey. He intended producing the car in quantity but when the U.S. entered the war early in 1917 production was again postponed.

Because Rolls Royce was allegedly unhappy with one of their dealers developing a rival product, a new company called OD (Owner Driver) was set up in 1919 to produce the car in Belfast. Unfortunately, a new horsepower tax, postwar recession, and the withdrawal of financial backers killed that project (OD survived as motor engineers, however, and is still reconditioning engines).

Meanwhile, JB was tweaking the design in New Jersey for the American market, giving it a 4.5-litre six-cylinder motor, greater ground clearance, and four-wheel brakes. The car was launched at the New York motor show in 1921, but although it attracted lots of attention it had no established reputation and was prohibitively expensive. The chassis cost $10,000 when you could buy a luxury Duesenberg complete with body for $8,500 or a Model T for $345. It didn’t sell, and the company went into receivership in 1922.

Only three Fergus chassis and one OD were built, none of them in the U.S. (Chassis from a Fergus and the OD survive in the Ulster Transport and Folk Museum).

The Fergus completed as an all-weather touring car in 1915. The Autocar

A Lateral move

By the time JB sold his Belfast business in 1921 he had put down roots in the U.S. In 1920 he married Lucille Mason, a minister’s daughter from Philadelphia fifteen years his junior, and their sons Joseph junior (Joe) and Bruce were born in 1922 and 1927 respectively. No longer with an auto business of his own, JB continued to work on car design projects and consulted. Chrysler engaged him to learn about the Fergus’ rubber engine mounts (the world’s first), for example, and he reportedly ‘did all the front suspension [design] work’ for the Cord cars manufactured from 1929.

JB was now, however, working mainly in Newark’s burgeoning radio industry. He became a manager at the Radioceive Manufacturing Company, which made equipment and accessories such as headphones and speakers near the former Fergus works. Soon JB was listed in directories at the same address as the Mozart-Grand Company and the United Radio Corporation (which both made headphones and speakers), and as a manufacturer of fibre products (presumably cones for headphones and speakers). He had not abandoned auto work entirely, because he was also listed as the Fergus Motor Company, auto manufacturer in 1925 and as The Fergus Company, auto parts in 1929. Clearly, JB was going after any work he could get.

Early in 1928 JB responded to a promising business opportunity. Shortly after John Logie Baird made the first transatlantic television broadcast he led a syndicate of ‘radio tycoons’ on a month long trip to London to purchase all American, Canadian, and Mexican rights to Baird’s mechanical television system. They dealt with Oliver Hutchinson, the managing director of the Baird Company – a fellow Ulsterman and a partner with his brother Samuel in the Belfast business that acquired

J.B. Ferguson Ltd. in 1921. (Baird and both Hutchinsons had been apprentices at the Argyle Motor Company before the Great War when J.B. Ferguson Ltd. was an Argyle dealer.) The trip was successful, but nothing came of it and by 1934 Baird’s mechanical television was obsolete.

The enlarged motor depot seen in the advertisement on the cover of the 1932 Belfast telephone directory.

Part 2: Journal 111 Winter 2024/25

Jonathan Kinghorn, published in Journal No. 110 Autumn 2024

Fergus Motors part 2

After JB’s radio work evaporated in 1929 he borrowed money, relocated to New York City, and returned wholly to the motor trade. Early in 1931 he took over a six-storey garage at 444 West 55th Street in Manhattan and two years later opened the Fergus Auto Club at 247 West 54th Street. The Auto Club had serious labour problems and JB closed it at a considerable loss in 1937. Fortunately, by 1934 he had leased a showroom almost next door on the corner with Broadway’s ‘Auto-mobile Mile’ just five blocks below Central Park. From there he sold the British cars he considered superior to American vehicles, principally Austins, Hillmans, and Daimlers importing them as he could finance them. He also sold Crossleys and a Lagonda exhibited in the 1936 London Motor Show. On a rare trip to the UK in 1938 (to deal with his father’s estate) JB attended the London Motor Show and talked with H.F.S. Morgan, and by early 1939 had imported his first few Morgans.

The showroom business incorporated in 1940 as Fergus Motors Inc. with JB president and sole owner. With new British vehicles unobtainable because of the European war, JB sold used cars. He also ran a Plymouth and DeSoto dealership at 251 West 54^th Street from c.1941-45. His business reportedly doubled during the war, and with substantial mortgages he was able to buy three of his leased properties between 1943 and 1946 – the Broadway showroom, 251 West 54th Street, and 444 West 55th Street. When JB’s son Joe joined Fergus Motors as a salesman after five years with the U.S. Army Air Corps he freed JB to concentrate on finances and auto  development projects. JB restyled an Austin A40 for the American market in 1949, for example, but it never went into production. And in 1952 he persuaded Panhard to develop a small sports car for the American market with his financial support (produced as the Dayna) but pulled out of the project. When he died seated at his drawing board in 1967, he was working on a car with compressed air – and steam-assisted systems!

This Fergus saloon was probably the car shown in New York in 1921.

Once they became available again in 1946 British cars were retailed in Manhattan and some were distributed to dealers in eastern states. Fergus Motors initially focused once more on Austins, Hillmans, and Daimlers, but imported other models too, including a handful of Healey Westlakes (Joe snagged one of those). The showroom’s upper floor had been remodelled for small car sales in 1944 but Jaguar withdrew in 1949 because the lower level had become so dilapidated.  JB was told he’d get other dealerships if it was upgraded; the refurbishment that followed included a modern façade for both levels and cost a whopping $13,500. In the 1950’s a wide range of European marques was imported, including Alvis, Armstrong-Siddeley, Borgward, Cisitalia, Crossley, Jaguar, Jowett, MG, Morgan, Panhard, Renault, Saab, Simca, Singer, Standard, and Triumph vehicles. Studebakers, which J.B. Ferguson Ltd. had sold in Belfast before World War One, were also stocked.

In about 1948 444 West 55th Street was reoccupied after it had been leased to the government during the war and this is where used cars were sold. The ground level also contained the Service Department, the first floor housed the Parts Department, and there was a machine shop on the second floor; the uppermost levels were storage. In the late 1940’s Fergus Motors also rented a branch showroom in Bridgehampton on Long Island and another at 290 Park Avenue referred to pretentiously as the ‘Salon’. These were opened at Joe’s urging, but neither made money; Bridgehampton was short-lived, but the Salon was taken on an inescapable lease and lost substantial sums for a decade. JB kept a tight grip on finances, but Joe had big and expensive ideas. He enjoyed racing in his spare time and participated in the first 12-hour race at Sebring in 1952 and many other events. Joe felt strongly that racing helped sales and after his father’s retirement had Fergus support and sponsor race cars–largely a series of Morgans that appeared at Sebring most years between 1955 and 1966 and a Turner raced in 1963. These were set up for racing by Fergus and some were also lent to drivers for east coast events before they were sold on to customers.

Fergus Imported Cars

Fergus Motors Inc. made a profit from 1945 to 1947, broke even in 1948, and then lost money. In 1955 JB retired and struck a sweet deal with his managers. They took over as Fergus Imported Cars but kept Joe on the payroll. JB secured a consultant’s salary and free use of the machine shop at 444 West 55th Street for his auto development work. He later got into serious trouble for failing to report income received through this ‘Experimental Department’, which clearly operated as a business with employees selling, repairing, and renting cars.

Harry Ferguson and JB in the late 1950’s. Morgan Motor Company

Fergus Imported Cars was successful and had a boom year in 1959, but by the early 1960’s manufacturers had withdrawn most of its dealerships. It became dependent on Borgward sales–1,200-1,500 cars per month accounting for up to 90% of its business. Then in 1961 sales of imported cars slumped as the U.S. went into recession. More seriously, Borgward was forced into

bankruptcy and began an extended liquidation. Shortly after April 30, 1962, Fergus Imported Cars was dissolved, and on May 3 the business was sold back to JB.

Fergus-Fine Cars

In September 1963, after lengthy negotiations, Joe organized a new corporation to continue the Broadway showroom as Fergus Imported Cars merged with nearby Fine Cars Inc., to form Fergus-Fine Cars. Desperate to find a replacement for the Borgward cash cow, Joe invested heavily in the DAF Daffodil hoping that it would compete with the Volkswagen beetle. Nationwide DAF distributorship was taken on in 1964 and dealerships were cut from 69 to 25 to streamline operations. Joe continued to take as many Morgans as he could get (about 20 per month) and began importing Jensens and Turners. Unfortunately, the Jensen proved too expensive for the American market and Turners, which were built in small numbers, ceased production in 1966.

 Deluxe Auto Sales

Fergus-Fine Cars appears to have folded around this time because Joe began trading from the Broadway showroom as Deluxe Auto Sales Ltd. in partnership with his brother Bruce. Deluxe Auto Sales continued to sell Morgans and—until safety issues led to an import ban in 1967–DAFs.

By then it was apparent that impending safety and impending regulations would likely bar Morgans from the U.S. market too. When JB died in December 1967 Joe had to deal with his complex estate and serious ‘problems with the tax people’ (he owed $300,000). This diverted Joe from the dealership and its history becomes even more obscure. An Automobile Mile ‘megadealer’ known as Charlie Chrysler reportedly bought the business and closed the Broadway showroom in 1968.

Joe tried to get ‘something worthwhile’ going for Morgan in the late sixties and early seventies and had an American-built V8 Morgan prototyped. Eventually, however, he left New York City for Dadeville, a tiny town in his wife’s home state of Alabama, where he died in 1995. Bruce, who was reportedly impaired by a brain injury incurred when he fell down a lift shaft at some time, had died in New York in 1993.

Published in Journal No. 111 : Winter 2024/25
Jonathan Kinghorn