Historic Car Brands

Minerva was a Belgian automobile manufacturer from 1902 until a 1934 merger with the other major Belgian manufacturer, Impéria Automobiles. Minerva made motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses and its last product, a small 4WD, before the company closed in 1958.

Australian Minerva motorcycle in Victoria – Alice Mansfield

Minerva vehicles began with a bicycle factory that was opened in 1897 by Sylvain de Jong. He soon began making ‘clip-on’ motorcycle engines and complete motor-cycles in 1900.

Minerva became one of the world’s premier names in motorcycles and motorcycle engines. Minerva engines exported to the UK powered the very first Triumphs and Chater-Lea produced Minerva engines in the UK.

From 1904 Minerva began focusing more on car production, and while development and production of the Minerva motorised bicycles and motorcycles continued, they increasingly became a less significant part of the company.

Minerva Type A – Helgex

A 6hp, four-cylinder Minerva car that was similar to the Panhard appeared in 1902 and car manufacturing began in 1904. Early Minerva cars featured side-chain drive and steel-clad wood chassis.

Engines were side-valve types with ’T-heads’, in 1.6-litre, two-cylinder, 2.4-litre, three-cylinder and 3.2-litre four-cylinder sizes. 

Minerva also produced a successful Stg £106 Minervette cycle-car, powered by a 636cc single-cylinder engine, transversely mounted at the front, driving the offside rear wheel by chain and two-speed, constant-mesh gearbox. 

By 1905 Minerva consolidated its car offerings to steel-chassis, bevel-drive twins and 2.9-litre in-line fours and the four-cylinder Minerva was sold in London by the Hon C S Rolls. (Who knows what would have happened if Henry Royce hadn’t come along…)

A 3.6-litre Minerva 22 and 6.2-litre six Minerva arrived in 1907, followed by eight-litre Kaiserpreis Minervas, with five-bearing F-head (inlet over exhaust) engine and chain drive and an L-head monobloc 2.5-litre four model.

A Kaiserpreis won the Belgian Circuit des Ardennes race in 1907.

1914 Minerva Type KK Tourer sleeve-vale engine – R M Sothebys

Minerva cars had motorsport successes, but by 1909 the company moved away from poppet-valve engines in favour of the much quieter and then more reliable Knight double-sleeve-valve engine. Thereafter all production Minerva cars trucks and buses used Knights and their success was reflected in the phasing-out of motorcycle production after 1910.

Minerva also supplied its  Knight-licensed engines to other firms, including Mors and the Anglo-American Crown Magnetic. Émile Mathis’s 1913 sleeve-valve cars were Minervas with Mathis radiators. 

The 1910 Minerva cars were all fours: a 2.2-litre monobloc 16hp; a 4.25-litre 26hp and a Minerva 38 with 6.3-litre capacity. Electric lighting was available in 1912 on Minerva cars, along with Citroën-type helical bevel gears.

1914 Minerva Type KK Tourer – R M Sotheby’s

The Knight engines produced ample power, so although the sleeve-valve decision  had more to do with quiet, reliable operation than it did with performance, Minerva’s Knights scored outright victories in the Swedish Winter Trials of 1911, 1913 and 1914, and Minerva cars did well in the Austrian Alpine Trials. 

The 3.3-litre Minerva cars that ran in the 1914 TT were good for 85mph and the team cars filled 2nd, 3rd and 5th places.

By 1914, electric starters were optional and wire wheels were standard. The Minerva car range extended from a modest 2.1-litre, worm-drive, monobloc Minerva 14, which was popular as a taxi in Sweden, up to an enlarged 7.4-litre Minerva 38.

The reputation of Minerva cars and the quality of finished coachwork gained it international recognition. The company’s clientele included Henry Ford and the Kings of Belgium, Sweden and Norway.

Minerva M53 in action in 1914 near Lombardsijde (Belgium) – G Garitan

During World War I Sylvain de Jong and his engineers moved to Amsterdam, where they maintained development of their automobiles. Minerva cars were used for hit and run attacks against the Germans, with rifle fire and light machine guns mounted in open-topped vehicles. Later vehicles employed armour-plate bodywork, but when the conflict bogged down – literally – into trench warfare, they became redundant.

De Jong set Minerva cars back on their feet after the German occupation of 1914-1918 and by 1920 they were producing two Minerva models: a 3.6-litre four-cylinder Minerva 20 and a six-cylinder, 5.3-litre 30CV – both with monobloc engines, vacuum feed, cone clutches, four-speed gearboxes, cantilever rear springing and rear-wheel and transmission brakes. Disc clutches were standardised in 1921. 

1924 Minerva MLT- truck and 1934 Minerva SP fire engine – Zairon

Minerva’s 1920s Knight engines were powerful, in comparison with most car engines and the company’s experience with making the strong chassis for ultra-long car wheelbases made a move into trucks, buses and fire engines logical. 

Minerva’s commercial vehicles were successful in Europe, until the progressive uptake of diesel engines from around 1928. The first diesel trucks had originated in Germany, in 1923 and Minerva’s petrol sleeve-valve engines couldn’t compete in fuel economy terms.

Minerva cars made their own bodies, as did Daimler, so a new coach works opened at Mortsel, an Antwerp suburb, in 1922.

Minervas were successful not only in Europe, but in the United States, where American film stars, politicians and industrialists appreciated the cars. The Minerva had the same quality as the Rolls-Royce, but was slightly less expensive. 

1923 Minerva Roadster four-cylinder

Smaller Minerva cars followed: a 15CV 2-litre four in 1922 and a 20CV six of 3.4-litre capacity in 1923. The 20CV had four-wheel brakes as standard and that became standard across the Minerva range in 1926, with Dewandre servo assistance on the larger cars. In 1925, Minerva sold 2500 cars. 

1925 Minerva 5.3L 82bhp – Toyota Auto Museum

The 1927 Minerva car range included the imposing six-litre Minerva AK that featured aluminium-alloy pistons, light-steel sleeves and a 3800mm wheelbase, along with the well-priced, small, six-cylinder, two-litre Minerva 12-14CV hat had a three-speed unit gearbox and sold for less than Stg£500 in the UK. This Minerva model proved popular and was made until 1933.

1928 Minerva Transformable Town Car – Mr Choppers

Three new big cars came in 1930: a 150bhp sports edition of the Minerva AK with full-pressure lubrication and two straight-eights. The 6.6-litre Minerva AL straight-eight had a nine-bearing crankshaft, dual ignition and a right-hand change. The four-litre, straight-eight, 22CV AP had coil ignition and a central gear lever, and could be bought for less than Stg£900. 

1928 Minerva AK 32CV coupe chauffeur – Andre Ritzinger

In 1932 came the 20CV, six-cylinder version of the AP – virtually the same engine, but with two of its 75x112mm cylinders lopped off –  in something of an effort to trim pricing in the face of the Great Depression.

In 1934 came the two-litre Minerva M4 – a revival for the four-cylinder engine after seven years of sixes and eights – with three-speed synchromesh gearbox, mechanical brakes and pillar-less saloon bodywork, but it wasn’t a success.

Facing financial ruin by 1935, Minerva merged with the only other Belgian factory still making private cars, Imperia of Nessonvaux, in October of that year.

1937 Minerva AP 22CV limousine – Andre Ritzinger

A prototype front-wheel-drive Minerva car exhibited at the 1937 Brussels Salon featured all-independent springing by torsion bars and a transversely-mounted 3.6-litre Ford V8 engine and torque converter transmission. Only three prototypes were made and it’s believed that they were destroyed two years later, to prevent their falling into Nazi hands.

The Minerva AP continued until 1938, but thereafter the only cars sold under the Minerva name were some FWD Imperias exported to France. 

Lacking the resources to produce a new car of its own after WWII, Minerva engaged in collaboration with British manufacturers, who were under enormous pressure from the near-bankrupt UK Government to ‘export or perish’.

Minerva assembled the Standard Vanguard saloon under license and then concluded a deal with Rover for the assembly of Land Rovers for the Belgian Army. 

Belgian-made Land Rover and the original – Joint Forces News

The 80-inch-wheelbase Land Rovers were supplied as ‘CKD’ (Completely Knocked Down) kits of rolling chassis, which Minerva then bodied. At the time, the UK had a limited amount of sheet steel, but a surplus of aircraft aluminium sheeting, which is why Land Rovers had aluminium bodywork. However, the Belgian Army’s requirement was for steel bodywork, so Minerva made steel-bodied Land Rovers.

There were several stylistic differences between the British and Belgian Army versions and the most obvious was the shape of the front mudguards, where the Belgian vehicles had flat, angled panels instead of the compound-curved British ones. However, some aluminium-bodied Belgian Land Rovers were assembled for the Belgian State Police.

In the meantime, a 1952 comeback for car production was planned around two Minerva-branded cars: a small car based on the 1947 Cemsa-Caproni and a luxury model, based on the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire, but neither materialised. 

Production of Minerva Land Rovers switched to the 86-inch-wheelbase model when that was introduced in 1954, but that release was soon followed by a bitter dispute between the two companies. Minerva won this breach of contract suit in mid-1956, by which time nearly 9000 Minerva Land Rovers had been produced, but that was the end of the partnership. (How unlike a British car company to shoot itself in the foot – Ed).

By this time Minerva was also producing a civilian version of the Land Rover, for which it saw a future, so it was forced to develop a 4×4 of its own. 

The replacement that emerged was the Tout Terrain (All Terrain), which was made as a short chassis C20 (wheelbase 2.05m) and long chassis C22 (2.20m). The military versions were designated M20/M22. 

Ahead of its time, the body/chassis was of monocoque construction that may well have been the inspiration for the US Army M151 MUTT ‘Jeep’ that was introduced in 1960. 

The Minerva showed great design ingenuity in its use of a front subframe that held the radiator/engine/gearbox/front suspension assembly. That entire module could be unbolted from the body by two fitters in about one hour, the company claimed. The original engine was a 2.3-litre petrol Continental F4140 four and there was a Jabranch JW35, 1.4-litre, two-stroke, twin-cylinder diesel option.

Unfortunately, only around 100 C20/C22s were made before Minerva shut the doors in 1958.

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