The Humber car company has featured a few times in my history articles over recent weeks. Most people know the Humber brand from the Rootes Group and was seen as the luxury brand within the group.
Thomas Humber who founded the company started like many entrepreneurs in the 19th century by building bicycles. He was very successful with 3 factories in the UK. In 1898, Humber started to extend the bicycle into a motorcycle by fitting a 2 horse power engine. The same year, Humber started to make cars and the success of the cars meant that the motorcycle production was outsourced so that car manufacturing could take precedence.
Humber cars ranged from 600cc to 6 litre models and soon became on of the largest manufacturers in the UK.
In 1925, Humber bought Commer commercial vehicles to extend the range and then in 1928 they bought Hillman to make a low cost car for the growing buyer numbers. Three years later, Humber sold out to the Rootes Group who were becoming the UK’s first motoring conglomerate. The bicycle division was sold to Raleigh in 1932 and they continued to sell the brand until the 70s.
Humber were the luxury cars in the Rootes Group and built cars such as the Hawk, Snipe, Vogue and Sceptre. They followed the trend of badge engineering by making the same car as Hillman but adding in more goodies. Humbers were even built in Australia in Melbourne alongside Singers and Hillmans.
The Humber name started to disappear during the late 60s as Chrysler increased its ownership of the Rootes Group until they swallowed it completely. Humber cars were favourites of the British royalty – King George VI had nearly 50 shipped to overseas outposts so that they were available for his jollies around the empire!
Some notable engineers
worked for Humber, like Louis Coatelen who went on to work for Sunbeam and Hillman prior to the three being brought together by Rootes and William Heynes
who worked briefly for Humber before making his name by designing the Jaguar XK
straight 6 engine and being involved with the famous C and D-Type Jags.