Quickly after, the board struck a £7 million deal (£261m in our cash) for its huge Slough depot, which had been damned by a parliamentary inquiry as outrageously wasteful.
The client was a consortium led by Percival Perry, Ford of Britain’s visionary ex-boss. After making the most of the 15,000 autos there, the group persuaded new French automobile maker Citroën to construct a manufacturing facility in Slough, and the ensuing buying and selling property turned a roaring success. Let’s be form and assume the board being busy finalising this deal was why 3 times it did not acknowledge one other agency’s supply to purchase as many as 3000 lorries!
It’s little marvel that the board struggled to maintain up while you see this advert it positioned within the Night Mail: “Authorities property on the market. Factories, aerodromes, huts, constructing materials, furnishings, home tools, equipment, energy plant, steam plant, electrical plant, agricultural equipment, highway bridges, railway materials, dock tools, contractors’ shops, textile items, clothes, boots and footwear, medical shops, machine instruments, chemical compounds and explosives, river and canal craft, motor launches and steamers, basic shops, and many others, and many others.”
Additionally in 1920, a large deal was executed for 10,000 plane and 33,000 aero engines, with the brand new Plane Disposal Firm paying £100m. It could take a decade to promote all of that.
