Park Ward

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Park Ward was a British coachbuilder founded by William M. Park and Charles W. Ward in 1919 who had worked together at F.W. Berwick Ltd., the makers of Sizaire-Berwick cars. The company was based in Willesden, North London.

After producing bodies for a variety of cars in the early 1920s Park Ward became particularly associated with Bentley. In 1922 they were asked by Rolls-Royce to take part in a scheme to make standard bodies for the small Twenty model but the project was abandoned but they did start to build bespoke bodies for Rolls-Royce customers exhibiting a 40-50 model at the British Empire exhibition in 1924. From the mid-1920s the company started to concentrate on Bentley and Rolls-Royce models.

In 1933 Rolls-Royce bought a stake in the company and after the Rolls-Royce take over of Bentley, Park Ward became the first choice of coachwork supplier to Bentley customers. All-steel bodies were introduced in 1936 alongside the traditional metal on wood frame coachwork. Rolls-Royce acquired the rest of the shares in 1939 and Park Ward became a wholly owned subsidiary.

After World War II Park Ward continued to produce special coachwork and the all-steel technology was used by Rolls-Royce to produce a standard body range on its cars starting with the Bentley Mark VI.

In 1961, Rolls-Royce merged the brand with the newly acquired H. J. Mulliner & Co. to form Mulliner Park Ward. Operations were centralised in the Willesden factory and a range of bodies produced for the Silver Cloud and Phantom V Rolls-Royces and Bentley Continental models.