Motor City
Steve Humphries reveals why Coventry ruled the British motor industry, and shares the stories of those who worked within it
Steve Humphries hears the fascinating stories of those who made Coventry a driving force in car manufacturing
Coventry’s year as the UK City of Culture begins in May – something for us all to look forward to as the country opens up again. As part of the BBC’s contribution to the celebrations, I have spent a year working on the BBC Four documentary Classic British Cars: Made in Coventry. Among the world-famous cars made in the city were Daimlers, Rileys, Hillmans, Standards, Triumphs, Rovers and Jaguars. By the middle of the 20th century Coventry had become Britain’s ‘motor city’, but it fell into a dramatic decline leading to mass unemployment. Its downturn inspired the single Ghost Town, which earned local band The Specials a number one in 1981. However, there are many green shoots of recovery today.
The car industry developed in Coventry because of a centuriesold tradition of craftsmanship in the city. It was known for its skilled weavers and watchmakers, but when those industries
collapsed with the Industrial Revolution, their craftsmen found work in the new transport revolution that began with bicycles. In the 1890s, there were 75 cycle companies in the city. Some like Humber, Rover and Singer would go on to make cars.
Riley, a company that was once famous for its beautifully crafted sporty cars, began as a family of Coventry weavers. Its story is told by octogenarian Victor Riley, the oldest surviving member of Coventry’s greatest car-manufacturing dynasty. He’s spent many years collecting artefacts, photographs and documents to create the Riley Archives, which has opened on the canal bank as part of the City of Culture celebrations ( rileyarchives.com). Victor remembers how in the early days it was truly a family business: “Alan made the bodies, Percy made the engines, Stanley designed the chassis and Ted did a multiplicity of tasks helping out wherever father [the firm’s
founder, William Riley] put him.” Victor is often at the archive in person to guide visitors around the treasures he has preserved from the company’s illustrious past.
His pride and passion for his family’s contribution to the early car industry are heartwarming. His one sadness is that Riley lost its identity when it became part of the British Motor Corporation in 1952: “There was rationalisation, and the identity of Riley got buried.” Nevertheless Victor is thrilled that Riley lives on through the many clubs dedicated to the marque, and the thousands of lovingly preserved Rileys: “I reckon there are more than 10,000 of them still going strong all over the world.”
Another local manufacturer featured in our film is the Rootes Group. William and Reginald Rootes were ambitious car dealers from Kent who moved into manufacturing when they bought Coventry car makers Hillman and Humber in the late 1920s. One of their most popular models – the Hillman Minx – was launched in 1932, and soon 20,000 of them were being sold every year.
Leading brands later produced by the Rootes brothers included Humber, Singer, Sunbeam and Talbot. But as the British car industry slumped in the 1960s because of poor management, overmanning and competition from abroad, the company was taken over by Chrysler in 1967 and then Renault. Happily many of the Rootes Group artefacts and archive material going back to the early 20th century were saved by Coventry-born Andy Bye, who used to work as a senior manager for Rootes Group and understood their unique value.
One of the highlights of our filming was the guided tour that Andy gave us around the Rootes Archive Centre in Wroxton near Banbury ( rootesarchive.org). He showed us some of the 300,000 engineering drawings held there. “The draughtsmen would make all of the calculations and then draw the design in pencil. Once he was satisfied, he would pass it over to a team of tracers. They were practically all women, because they’d got a better hand. Then they would go over it all in ink to make the final print. For every detail on that drawing, somebody would need to make the part. It’s a work of art. The Coventry draughtsmen were an immensely skilled group of people. It’s a great record of Coventry’s past.”
Captain Of Industry
Perhaps the most amazing story that we uncovered is that of Captain John Black and the rise and fall of the Standard Motor Company, once one of Coventry’s leading car manufacturers. The story is told by Black’s son Nick, who has spent years researching the life of the father he barely knew, once the most powerful and respected man in the city’s car industry. “He’s a forgotten hero,” says Nick. “Who’s heard of Captain Black nowadays?”
Black was a shell-shocked machine-gunner in the First World War. From a modest background, he worked his way up into Warwickshire’s hunting and shooting set, got a job at Hillman and married the boss’s daughter, Daisy Hillman.
In 1929, Black left the car manufacturer to become joint managing director at its financially struggling competitor Standard. There, he revolutionised the business by introducing an assembly line, imitating Henry Ford’s pioneering mass-production methods in the USA. Within a decade, output at Standard shot up from 8,000 vehicles a year to 55,000. Although working on the assembly line was repetitive and boring, Black was extremely popular with his staff.
Much later, Nick talked to some of the last people to work for his father and discovered one of the secrets of his success. “The remarkable thing about the shop floor at Standard was that my dad used to take a very personal interest in everybody who worked there. He actually remembered all of their names. He’d often be walking along discussing something quite serious and he’d see one of the workers and say,
‘How’s your mum at the moment? How’s her arthritis doing?’ ”
By the end of the 1930s, Standard and the Rootes Group were each making about 10 per cent of Britain’s cars. Booming sales helped fund Black’s flamboyant lifestyle. There were wild parties, skiing trips to Switzerland and the purchase of Mallory Court, a sprawling country estate where he lived with Daisy and their daughter Rosalind. But John Black was a troubled man. “Clearly my dad was unhappily married to Daisy.
He used to lock himself in the library at Mallory Court with a loaded pistol for shooting practice against the wood panelling. So he had some issues. He dealt with it all by drinking. He used to drink for six months, and then he’d stop drinking for six months.
He’s a forgotten hero. Who’s heard of Captain Black?
Then one day he went to a dance in Nuneaton and bumped into a young woman called Joan. She was 21 – 17 years his junior – and they instantly fell in love. Joan, who’s my mother, told me that she’d never met anyone like him in her life. But it was six years