Hillman

From Classic Car Life

Hillman is a British automobile marque created by the Hillman Motor Car Company, founded in 1907. The company was based in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, near Coventry, England. Before 1907 the company had built bicycles. Although the Hillman company was acquired by Humber in 1929, Hillman was used as the primary marque of the Rootes Group from 1931, following its acquisition of Humber, until 1967, when Chrysler in turn took over Rootes. The marque continued to be used under Chrysler until 1976.

History

The original company named Hillman-Coatalen was founded by William Hillman with the Breton Louis Coatalen as designer and chief engineer. However, Coatalen left in 1909 to join the Sunbeam Car Company and the company was re-registered as the Hillman Motor Car Company in 1910.

The first cars were large featuring a 9.76 litre 6 cylinder engine or a 6.4 litre four. A smaller car, the 9 hp of 1913 with a 1357 cc side valve four cylinder, was the first to sell in significant numbers and was re-introduced after World War 1 as the 11 hp having grown to 1600 cc. The big seller was the 14 hp introduced in 1925, and the only model made until 1928. Following the fashion of the time a Straight Eight of 2.6 litres and Hillman's first use of overhead valves came in 1928 but soon gained a reputation for big end problems.

Credit for this page must go to the excellent Wikipedia, the original page can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillman