Motoring Memory Lane

Thomas Humber started making bicycles in 1868 and by 1900 had three factories churning them out.

He saw the potential of motorised transport and moved into motorbikes and voiturettes.

During the First World War, they made armaments and aircraft engines and resumed car making after 1918.

In the 1920s Humber produced small to medium cars and by the depression-hit 1930s had part-merged with Hillman and, with Singer and Sunbeam, became part of the Rootes Group.

Shrewdly, Rootes made Humbers big, solid and posh, with Hillmans smaller and middle-class.

In the later 1930s Humbers were called the poor man’s Rolls Royce – their Pullmans and Super Snipes were used by Royalty and government ministers. Churchill had five and King George VI liked his Humber so much that after the war he ordered 45 for embassies across the world.

After 1939, various military versions of Humbers appeared – Monty had one called “Old Faithful” that drove him 60,000 miles around a shattered Europe after D-Day.

Post-war, the UK car industry focused on exports to America. Humbers, too, imitated US styling and moved to enclosed headlights, curved windscreens and more chrome.

Humber’s first post-war design, the Hawk, was an enlarged Hillman Minx, but by 1960 the Hawks and Super Snipes had bulging chrome bumpers, four headlights and “cutback” rear windows. Very stylish but it made them cumbersome and gutsy.

Rootes then hit a bad patch, after ministers arm-twisted them to open the Linwood plant near Glasgow to make the Imp.

Chrysler Corp bought Rootes in 1964 and soon scrapped the big Humbers, leaving the new Sceptre (a name acquired in a swap for Cortina with Ford) as the sole Humber model. Essentially a dolled-up Hillman Super Minx, it still had the Humber aura.

Rationalising the Rootes line-up, Chrysler launched the new Avenger, the Imp was also badged as the Singer Chamois and Sunbeam Stiletto, and one standard “Arrow” body became the Hillman Minx and Hunter, Singer Gazelle and Vogue and the Humber Sceptre, with four square headlights and pseudoleather roof.

Untold thousands of Hunters also went in knocked-down kit form to Iran, where it was assembled as the top-selling Peykan.

Chrysler Europe, which had also bought France’s Simca, hit bad times in the mid-1970s, and the last Sceptre came off the line in 1976. In 1978 they sold their European operations to Peugeot and Renault. Peugeots were built at the former Hillman plant at Ryton-on-Dunsmore near Coventry but that too closed in 2007.

Relatively few Humbers survive, although they appear at classic auctions. However, a Hull potato merchant, Allan Marshall, has a private museum of around 50-60 Humbers including an as-yet unrestored 1932 Snipe used by Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, and Wallis Simpson as an unofficial royal car.

That is one real piece of motoring history.