Arab

Arab Motors was a small British car manufacturer based in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, active in the late 1920s. The marque is remembered chiefly for a single, technically advanced sports car model that emerged from a period of close collaboration among engineers associated with early British motor racing.

The Arab sports car was designed by Reid Railton, an engineer who had previously worked alongside J. G. Parry Thomas on the Leyland Eight and who would later lend his own name to a line of sports cars in the 1930s. The car was powered by a 1,960cc four-cylinder engine featuring a single overhead camshaft that operated inclined valves, with valve springs of the transverse leaf type—a design feature shared with the Marlborough-Thomas and with Thomas's racing specials. While it remains uncertain whether Parry Thomas was directly involved in developing the Arab's engine, the design clearly bore the influence of his engineering philosophy. The rest of the car followed more conventional practice, using a Moss four-speed gearbox and an ENV spiral-bevel rear axle. Of the roughly ten examples built, two were produced in a low-chassis configuration.

Production of the Arab was carried out across several locations. The first car was built at the Letchworth steel foundry of Kryn & Lahy, with around six subsequent examples constructed at the works of the Phoenix company. The final cars were assembled from remaining parts by Thomson & Taylor at Brooklands, marking the end of the marque's limited production run.

Despite its small output, the Arab represented a notable link between the engineering ideas of Parry Thomas and the later work of Reid Railton, reflecting the close-knit and technically ambitious character of British specialist car manufacturing in the interwar period.