Tough assignment
Throughout the history of British motorcycle manufacture, entrepreneurs from Brough to Wooler (and many lesser-known ones) have marketed their products under their family names. Not many would have thought of using their forenames though, and I’m pretty certain nobody except Oscar and Cedric Hanwell ever decided to combine both of their first names. The result was the Cedos (Osdric doesn’t flow off the tongue half as well) and just after the First World War the Hanwell brothers set up their business in Northampton.
Ambitiously, they hit the ground running with a model powered by their own design of engine. And they had the business acumen to start off with both a conventionally-framed gents’ motorcycle and a dropped frame ladies’ variant; a type that was experiencing a brief surge of popularity at the time. Like many competitors these initial models had engines with a capacity of
