Rootes was founded in Hawkhurst, Kent in 1913 by William Rootes as a car sales agency independent of his father's motor business. He moved operations to Maidstone by 1914 and contracted to repair aero engines. In 1917 he formed Rootes Limited, purchasing the Maidstone branch of his father's business — founded in 1897 — to expand aircraft engine repair and aircraft parts manufacture. Car and commercial vehicle distribution resumed in 1919 and extended to London and other parts of the country. By 1924 Rootes had become the largest truck and car distributor in the United Kingdom, with showrooms in Devonshire House, Piccadilly offering new cars from £145 to £3,000 from manufacturers including Rolls-Royce, Daimler, Sunbeam, Austin, Hillman, Fiat and Clyno.
Entry into car manufacture came in 1929 through purchase of a controlling interest in Hillman, followed by Humber and Commer. Hillman and Commer became wholly owned subsidiaries of Humber Limited, with the Rootes brothers ultimately holding around 60 percent of Humber ordinary shares.
Rootes Limited was renamed Rootes Securities Limited in 1933. Further acquisitions during the Depression included Karrier (1934), Sunbeam (1934), Clement Talbot (1934) and British Light Steel Pressings (1937), all made subsidiaries of Humber Limited. London coachbuilders and Rolls-Royce and Daimler dealers Thrupp & Maberly had been bought as early as 1926. A new Rootes Limited was simultaneously incorporated in 1933 to hold the profitable motor distribution and servicing functions. In 1956 Singer Motors was acquired; Rootes-built Singers were badge-engineered Hillmans aimed at slightly more upmarket small-car buyers. Tilling-Stevens, including its subsidiary Vulcan Motors, was bought in the second half of 1950.
Rootes Securities Limited was renamed Rootes Motors Limited on 16 November 1949 and the company went public, raising £3,025,000 in preference shares. The equity capital remained with the Rootes family and Prudential, who held the offered £1,000,000 in ordinary shares. At that time employees totalled 17,000.
With the outbreak of war Rootes became involved in armaments production. In 1940, under the Government's shadow factory scheme, Rootes built a large assembly plant at Ryton-on-Dunsmore near Coventry, initially manufacturing aircraft including the Bristol Blenheim. A Royal Air Force heavy bomber, the Handley Page Halifax, was also produced at shadow factories at Speke Airport near Liverpool and at Blythe Bridge in Staffordshire from 1941 to 1943. Rootes also manufactured military vehicles based on the Humber and Commer.
The group rationalised its brands into clear market segments. Hillman produced the small Minx as the bread-and-butter model. Humber manufactured the larger luxury vehicles — Snipes and variants — and luxury mid-size cars ending with the compact Sceptre. Sunbeam continued a sports appeal, downsizing post-war to small and medium-sized cars. Commer and Karrier were the commercial vehicle brands, covering vans, trucks, tractors and bus chassis.
In 1954 Rootes introduced a novel supercharged diesel engine based on a Sulzer Brothers concept: the Commer TS3, a 2-stroke 3-cylinder unit with two opposed inward-facing pistons per cylinder driving the crankshaft through bell cranks. The 3.25-litre engine developed 90 hp (67 kW), equivalent to contemporary 4-stroke diesels of more than twice the capacity. Production ceased in 1968 after the Chrysler takeover.
Post-war, Rootes sold cars at a slight premium to home market competitors, justified on perceived superiority in design and finish. Studebaker stylist Raymond Loewy served as a design consultant; his influence is seen in the 1956 Audax range including the Hillman Minx, a model also produced under licence by Isuzu of Japan as the Isuzu Hillman Minx.
During the 1960s, Sunbeam's Alpine convertible achieved moderate success in the US market. In 1964 Rootes introduced the Tiger, a V8 derivative of the Alpine powered by a 260 cu in (4,261 cc) Ford V8 engine, with Carroll Shelby involved in development of the prototype. A 289 cu in (4,736 cc) model followed in 1967, but few were built as it was considered inappropriate for a Chrysler-controlled vehicle to use Ford power. Installing a Chrysler V8 was explored but the rear-mounted distributor would have required chassis redesign unaffordable given limited sales volumes.
In 1963 Rootes introduced the Hillman Imp, a compact rear-engined saloon with an all-aluminium OHC engine based on a Coventry Climax design originally developed for a fire pump. It was conceived as a response to the rival British Motor Corporation's Mini. A new factory at Linwood on the boundary between Paisley and Elderslie, Renfrewshire was built for its assembly, the location being required by the British government's industrial development certificate policy directing factories to depressed areas. The Linwood workforce had no experience in motor vehicle assembly and build quality suffered. Component suppliers remained in the Midlands, forcing transport of half-finished engine castings from Linwood to Ryton for machining and back, while completed Imps returned south, a 600-mile (970 km) round trip. The Imp was underdeveloped, and poor build quality combined with buyer apathy produced poor sales. Frequent strike action at Linwood and escalating warranty claims left Rootes without funds for new model development.
During the 1950s Rootes participated in major UK and European car rallies. Stirling Moss and Sheila van Damm were the team's top drivers, and the Sunbeam-Talbot 90's win at the 1955 Monte Carlo Rally was the most significant victory. In 1968 Rootes entered a factory team in the London-Sydney Marathon; driving a Hillman Hunter, Andrew Cowan took what was regarded as a surprise victory against factory teams with larger budgets.
In June 1964 Rootes Motors announced that Chrysler would take a 30 percent interest in ordinary capital, with completion in October 1964. Holdings were increased to 45 percent of ordinary shares and 65 percent of non-voting shares during 1966, and to approximately two-thirds of Rootes Motors capital in January 1967. The company was renamed Chrysler United Kingdom on 30 June 1970. Chrysler was simultaneously acquiring Simca of France and Barreiros of Spain, merging all three into Chrysler Europe. Former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca, in his autobiography, was disparaging of the Rootes operation, writing that Chrysler should never have bought it.
Under Chrysler ownership the Rootes marques were progressively phased out during the 1970s. Only Hillman remained by 1977, when it too was shelved. The Commer name was phased out in the 1970s, with van and truck models mostly assuming the Dodge nameplate by 1976. Chrysler's attempts to market Rootes cars in the US proved unsuccessful, partly because in 1968 the cars could not comply with exhaust emission requirements. In the early 1970s the Hillman Avenger was offered in North America as the Plymouth Cricket, but this was abandoned after two years.
Development of new models continued: the Chrysler Alpine (sold in France as the Simca 1307/1308) was introduced in 1975, produced at the former Rootes plant at Ryton as well as the former Simca plant at Poissy; both it and the Chrysler/Simca Horizon were voted European Car of the Year on their launches. The Horizon formed the basis for the US Plymouth Horizon and Dodge Omni. The Chrysler Sunbeam, a three-door hatchback based on the Avenger floorpan, was introduced in 1977 as successor to the Hillman Imp.
The weight of problems on Chrysler Europe led to its collapse in 1977 and its 1978 takeover by PSA Peugeot-Citroen. PSA closed the troubled Linwood factory and resurrected the Talbot marque to re-badge former Chrysler and Simca models. The Ryton plant was retained. The Talbot-badged models declined from nearly 120,000 UK sales in 1979 to around 25,000 in 1984, while the Peugeot brand grew. By 1985 PSA announced it would abandon the three-marque strategy; the Talbot Arizona replacement became the Peugeot 309, launched in autumn 1985 and the first Peugeot-badged car assembled at Ryton. The Talbot badge was discontinued on passenger cars in May 1986. The Ryton plant went on to assemble the Peugeot 405, Peugeot 306 and Peugeot 206. In April 2006 PSA announced production of the 206 would shift to Slovakia; production ceased on 12 December 2006, ending nearly 60 years of car manufacturing at Ryton and severing the motor industry's final direct link with the Rootes Group.
The intellectual property of the former Rootes Group — including dormant marque and model names — was divided between Chrysler and PSA Peugeot-Citroen following the 1978 divestment. Peugeot subsequently used names including Minx, Rapier and Sceptre on various models. Chrysler reused the Avenger nameplate on the Dodge Avenger and later the Jeep Avenger in 2023. In 2021 the successors of both conglomerates, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group, merged to form Stellantis, effectively reuniting surviving fragments of the Rootes Group under one umbrella. The only physical remnant of the group still in existence is the Whitley research and development centre, originally established during the Chrysler era and now owned by Jaguar Land Rover. Rootes' contribution to Coventry is commemorated by the University of Warwick naming Rootes Hall, one of its largest halls of residence, after the group.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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