The Iso-Speedic Company

The Iso-Speedic Co. Ltd was advertising engine speed control equipment by 1943-44, when it appeared in The Modern Diesel, and in 1954 was listed as a Coventry firm, telegraphic address 'Isospeedic Coventry', making precision governors. By 1959 it was at Charles Street, Warwick, with telephone Warwick 1034.

Its Land Rover product was the Iso-Speedic engine governor, a belt-driven centrifugal governor fitted to the Rover engine to hold a set speed while the centre or rear power take-off drove a winch, pump or compressor; Land Rover part numbers cover the Series I 1.6- and 2-litre engines and the 2.25 petrol of the Series II, IIA and III. In 1959 the company added a road-speed limiter 'as approved by the Rover Co. Ltd', a kit of an Iso-Speedic 608-series centrifugal switch on the speedometer drive, a 609-series solenoid throttle control unit on the carburettor and a modified accelerator linkage, which closed the throttle about 2 mph above the chosen limit and released it 3 mph below; the leaflet, received by the AA technical library in January 1961, cites British patent application 5226/59 and shows the installation on the 2.25-litre petrol Land-Rover.

The company's owner was Leonard Lee, chairman of Coventry Climax. When British Leyland absorbed Coventry Climax into its special products division in December 1971, Lee stepped down and took the Godiva Fire Pump business with him, merging it with his Iso-Speedic Company of Warwick, then described as makers of electric vehicles, fork-lift chains and engine speed regulators, both held by the Pelham Lee Group; adverts of 1973-74 treated Godiva Fire Pumps as a division of Iso-Speedic. The Transport and General Workers' Union's Coventry district kept a file on the Warwick company for 1966-68. In April 1979 Pelham Lee Holdings was acquired by Booker McConnell for £1.9 million and Godiva passed to Sigmund Pulsometer Pumps; the Iso-Speedic company's later fate has not been established.