Rootes
From Freepedia
The Rootes Group is a now-defunct British automobile manufacturer.
Rootes was the parent company of many famous British marques, including (but not limited to) Hillman, Humber, Singer, Sunbeam, Commer and Karrier. Originally founded in Kent in 1919 by William Rootes as a car sales company, Rootes grew and took over other companies, and became one of the earliest advocates of the policy of "badge engineering". Hillman was intended to be the basic brand, Singer slightly more upmarket, Sunbeam was the sports brand, while Humber made luxury models. Commer and later Dodge were the commercial vehicles division, whilst Karrier specialised in municipal contracts.
Rootes was best known for manufacturing stolid, dependable, well engineered (and largely unexciting) middle-market vehicles. Famous Rootes models include the Hillman Minx, Singer Gazelle, Humber Super Snipe and the Sunbeam Alpine.
In 1963, Rootes introduced the Hillman Imp, a compact rear engined saloon with an innovative all aluminum engine. It was intended to be Rootes' answer to the all-conquering Mini, and they endorsed their confidence in the Imp by building a massive new factory in Linwood, near Glasgow in which to assemble it. But the Imp was tragically underdesigned, and a whole string of quality and unreliability issues, coupled to buyer apathy towards the quirky design meant that the car never fulfilled its promise.
The move to Linwood was forced upon Rootes by the British Government which had introduced the principle of Industrial Development Certificates (IDCs). By their use, it was intended to concentrate new factory building in depressed areas of Britain. Thus, Rootes were not allowed to extend their existing plant in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, where they were based, but obliged to move to an area of Scotland with a shortage of work. The Linwood plant was a major disaster for many reasons - chiefly the workforce who had no experience of motor vehicle assembly, and the build quality and reliability of the cars inevitably suffered. Secondly, the component suppliers were still based in the Midlands of England, and the company incurred further costs in transporting half finished engine castings from Linwood to be machined at Ryton at the same time as completed Imps returned south again - in all a 600 mile round trip!
In the mid-1960s, Rootes was taken over by the Chrysler Corporation of America, following huge losses amid the commercial failure of the troubled Imp. Chrysler was also only too keen to take control of the struggling firm as it wished to have its own wholly-independent European subsidiary like arch rivals Ford and GM. Chrysler took over Simca of France at the same time, merging it with Rootes (now renamed as "Chrysler UK") to create Chrysler Europe. The Rootes name had largely vanished by 1971, and soon its other brand names were progressively phased out as the 1970s progressed. Only Hillman and Dodge were left by 1977, when Hillman too was shelved in favour of the Chrysler pentastar.
Chrysler UK soldiered on with a range of worthy but dull rear-wheel drive family cars like the Hillman Avenger and Hillman Hunter, while desperately trying to develop the Imp into a decent car. An attempt to take the Avenger to America as the Plymouth Cricket was aborted after only two years, and Chrysler's lack of interest in the former Rootes products was further reflected in its development of the Simca-designed Alpine/Solara and Horizon ranges instead. The Imp had been killed off in 1976, and the Hunter followed it three years later. Only the Avenger-based Chrysler Sunbeam hatchback, launched in 1977 kept the Rootes lineage alive, although the Alpine name was still in use and later Alpine and Solara special edition models were given the old Hillman model name, Minx.
Chrysler had spent much of the 1970s unsuccessfully trying to integrate its Rootes and formerly-French Simca ranges into one, coherent whole. The tradionally-engineered, rear wheel drive cars of the British company never fitted well in marketing terms with Simca's relatively advanced front wheel drive hatchbacks. Build quality suffered, and the Ryton and Linwood factories were the subject of frequent Government bail-outs. The resulting lacklustre product range, severe financial problems back home in the United States, coupled with a multitude of industrial relations problems in the 1970s led to the collapse of Chrysler Europe in 1977, leading to the company's 1978 takeover by PSA Peugeot-Citroen (for a mere $1), with the only surviving remnant of the car-producing part of the company in Britain being the Ryton assembly plant which today produces various Peugeot models for European markets. The Dodge trucks factory was sold separately to Renault. After the withdrawal of the last Dodge-derived trucks (latterly badged as Renaults) it became a production plant for engines for Renault Véhicules Industriels.
The Linwood plant closed in 1981, signalling the end of the road for the Avenger, but the production tooling for the Hillman Hunter went to Iran, where the car was still in production into the beginning of the 21st Century as the Paykan. It remains a common sight throughout the Middle East, especially as a taxi. Simca-based models continued to be built at both Ryton and Poissy using the resurrected Talbot badge for the first half of the 1980s; the Talbot Samba was essentially a reworked Citroën LN/LNA/Peugeot 104. The last true Simca design, the Peugeot 309 was originally to be launched as the Talbot Arizona. However, PSA saw little reason to maintain its third brand. The final Talbot to be marketed in the UK was the Express van.
