Fairey Winches

Fairey Winches Ltd came into being when the Fairey Aviation Co. bought Mayflower Automotive Products of Tavistock, and its Hamilton Works on Plymouth Road, from Avimo in August 1971; Grace's Guide and Wikipedia place the acquisition in the late 1950s, but the newspaper reports Grace's Guide cites date it to 1970-71. With the works came MAP's designs for Land Rover free-wheeling hubs, the Mayflower drum winch and the 1969 crankshaft capstan winch. Fairey relettered the capstan bollard FWL, replaced the mills pin with screw-in shear pins and raised its pull to 3,100 lb in 1971 and 4,000 lb in 1978, and adapted it for the Range Rover, the Stage 1 V8 and later the 90 and 110. From 1974 the firm was based at Abbey Rise, Tavistock, and at its height employed more than 150 people.

By the 1970s Fairey made mechanical, hydraulic and electric winches in capstan and drum form, and they formed the bulk of Land Rover's manufacturer-approved winch options throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Fairey Winches Ltd continued the MAP free-wheeling hub types and issued its own Fairey free-wheeling hub leaflet for the Series III. In 1975 it designed and built a mechanical overdrive unit for the Land Rover, fitted in the transfer box and selected by an in-cab lever; vehicles carrying it wore an 'Overdrive by Fairey' badge on the tailgate. A 1975 advertisement offered 'accessories especially for Land-Rovers; fuel saver; life saver', the latter a 'Rescue' winch developed from the capstan for Coastguard use where a variable line speed was needed. Land Rover's own leaflets carried the Fairey overdrive and Fairey free-wheeling hubs among its approved equipment.

The parent group went into receivership in 1977 and Fairey Winches Ltd of Tavistock, 'vehicle overdrives, winches, and hubs', was among the companies listed at the collapse; by 1982 it was part of Fairey Holdings. New product development at Land Rover and a trend for manufacturers to build accessories in-house forced Fairey out of the sector in the early 1980s, and in 1985 the American winch maker Superwinch bought FW Winches Limited of Tavistock, formerly Fairey Winches, gaining an overdrive transfer gearbox for the Toyota Land Cruiser and a capstan winch for the Land Rover 110. Superwinch carried on the Fairey-designed capstan for a few years, generally with unlettered bollards, and the Fairey overdrive remained in production in America. The Tavistock factory, Superwinch's European base, moved to Pitts Cleave Industrial Estate in 2006 and closed in April 2019.