British Standard Whitworth - Historical Misuse

Historical Misuse

British Morris and MG engines from 1923 to 1955 were built using metric threads but with bolt heads and nuts dimensioned for Whitworth spanners (wrenches) and sockets. The background for this was that the engines were produced using machine tools of a previously French-owned company that was set up for metric production; for the average British motorist to be able to service his car, the bolt heads had to fit imperial-sized spanners.

In the 2011 movie Cars 2 by Disney / Pixar, the vital clue to the discovery of the villain, Sir Miles Axlerod, is that he uses Whitworth bolts. Although Axlerod does not precisely resemble any real car (whereas numerous other characters are closely modelled on real cars), he seems most closely to match the original Range Rover Classic. In reality, early model Range Rovers used parts with imperial dimensions, although the photograph of the villain's engine is virtually identical to the later 3.9 litre single plenum Rover V8.