Over 25 Years of Car Leasing in West Midlands

Did You Know?

The West Midlands is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in western-central England with a 2014 estimated population of 2,808,356, making it the second most populous county in England after Greater London.

West Midlands has a mix of town and country including Birmingham’s city attractions, charming small towns and villages full of character and open spaces allowing visitors to get away from it all and enjoy the best of the scenic English countryside. Local attractions & places of interest include, Bullring, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Sea Life Centre Birmingham, Dudley Castle and Zoo.

Early West Midlands settlement was sparse in the remote and heavily wooded countryside until Saxon colonists penetrated the river valleys. Birmingham originated as a small Saxon settlement near a crossing of the River Rea, though it long remained but a minor town. Dudley and its castle dominated the remote and sparsely populated area now known as the Black Country.

Coal mining used to be the main industry of the Black Country. Nationally famous companies in the West Midlands are Cadbury's in Bournville, Birmingham; the brewing companies such as Coors Brewers in Burton on Trent, as well as Marmite; JCB is based in Staffordshire.

Maxaret, the world's first ABS braking system, was invented in Coventry by Dunlop in the early 1950s for aircraft; John Boyd Dunlop was a Scottish vet who had first produced the first pneumatic tyres in 1889.

The phrase ‘sent to Coventry’ apparently originated during the English Civil War? It seems that in 1647 Royalist prisoners of war captured elsewhere are were held in Coventry.

Wolverhampton-based inventor Thomas Parker built the first practical electric car, while the Wolverhampton-built Sunbeam motor car became the first vehicle to reach 200mph when it broke the land speed record. Wolverhampton-based firm, Guy Motors, produced armour plated cars to protect the Royal family and Winston Churchill during World War II.

The first Lloyds Bank was opened in Oldbury in 1864. The bank was originally set up in 1765 by John Taylor and Sampson Lloyd as a private banking business in Dale End, Birmingham.

In the mid-1800s, Coventry-born inventor James Starley created the first practical bicycle. Coventry became home to Britain’s first cycle factory, manufacturing the penny-farthing in 1871.