EAW029685 ENGLAND (1950). The Joseph Lucas Ltd Great King Street Works and the surrounding residential area, Newtown, 1950. This image has been produced from a print marked by Aerofilms Ltd for photo editing.

Joseph Lucas Ltd. Incorporated 1898.



Joseph Lucas sold paraffin. From this small beginning, a firm grew to be called called Joseph Lucas & Son. From 1882 it was based in Little King Street, later in the late 1890's moving a hundred yards to Great King Street, making pressed metal merchandise including plant pot holders, scoops and buckets. From 1875 lamps for ships was added to the product line and from 1879 oil and acetylene lamps for bicycles from 1879.



By 1902 there was a need for car parts and the company added magnetos, alternators, windscreen wipers, horns, lighting, wiring and starter motors. Joseph died of typhus in 1902, having refused to drink wine and instead drinking unsafe water whilst on holiday.



By the mid-1930s Lucas had a virtual monopoly of automotive electrical equipment in Great Britain.



The company expanded by acquisition of several companies.



Lucas began the 1970s as the 54th-largest British company.



In August 1977, a strike by Lucas tool-makers closed down the entire U.K. car industry and manufacturers started to seek to have several suppliers. There was severe pressure as the UK motor industry contracted, in 1981 Lucas showed an overall loss for the first time in its history. Between 1985 and 1989 the group as a whole disposed of 14 units, closed 25 production sites, and cut its work force by 35,000.



The BfA image is of Great King Street premises. Modernisation and rationalisation plus the cost of altering the old site led to work being moved elsewhere either to other companies or other sites.

By 1988, nearly a million square feet at Great King Street were empty and the buildings were ready for demolition.



August 1996 - Lucas Industries plc merged with the American Varity Corporation to form LucasVarity plc.



March 1999 - Purchased for cash by TRW. The diesel and aerospace divisions were sold off.



TRW was acquired by Northrop Grumman and the automotive section was sold on as TRW Automotive to Blackstone Group.



Since 2004 Elta Lighting Ltd have had a license to use the Lucas name in Europe supplying after-market components (not as an original equipment supplier). Products are similar to the old company- light units, batteries, switches and controls, ignition components, remanufactured starter motors and alternators, wiper blades and electrical accessories.



Further reading:

Cheeseright, Paul (2005). Lucas the Sunset Years.

Nockolds, Harold. Lucas : the first hundred years