The place of Frederick Simms in the annals of British motoring – and, indeed, motoring the world over – is an assured one. He was a mechanical engineer, businessman, prolific inventor and motor industry pioneer, who is credited with coining the word “petrol,” as well as taking a lead role in founding the Royal Automobile Club, and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.
Despite his eminently British origins, Simms was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1863, as the son of Frederick Louis Simms and his German wife, Antonia. He fostered an enduring ability in mechanical engineering and, in 1889, became friends with the German engineer Gottlieb Daimler, from whom he purchased the rights to use and manufacture of Daimler’s petrol engine throughout the British Empire.
Although the potential of Daimler’s motor car were not immediately evident to Simms, he very quickly established Simms & Co Consulting Engineers in the new Billiter Buildings at 49 Leadenhall Street, London and immediately began fitting the Daimler petrol engine to boats, creating the concept of motor launches. In the meanwhile, the success of Daimler’s motorcars in Germany became apparent and Simms brought one of the first petrol-powered cars to Britain in 1895 to demonstrate its potential.
As a result of this, Simms joined with H.J. Lawson to organise the Emancipation Run between the Metropole Hotel in London and the Metropole Hotel in Brighton as a celebration for the raising of the speed limit from 4mph to 14mph and the abandonment of ‘horseless carriages’ to be led by a man carrying a flag.
He subsequently became founder of the Automobile Club of Great Britain in 1897 as a lobbying and organisational body for the growing number of British motorists. The Club – which became the Royal Automobile Club in 1907 – was founded ‘entirely on (Simms) own initiative and at his own expense,’ according to his obituary.
The Club’s first premises at 4 Whitehall Court were engaged by Simms in his own name. Meanwhile, during the last days of the Boer War, Simms converted a car into the earliest form of tank, with an armoured body and one of Daimler’s petrol engines.
In 1903 the Simms Manufacturing Company Ltd. was founded at the Welbeck Works in Kimberley Road, Kilburn. There they made Simms-Welbeck cars, lorries and marine engines, fire engines, agricultural vehicles, military vehicles and guns, and aeronautical devices, when Simms is credited with inventing the first rubber bumper and a prototype indicator in the five years that the company was in existence.
A further, more successful, invention with which Simms is associated, is the Simms-Bosch magneto electric ignition apparatus, designed in concert with Robert Bosch. He subsequently established Simms Motor Units Ltd. to sell and repair components, in particular dynamos and magnetos, and became the principal supplier of this technology to support the British war effort in the first World War.