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