From a Kent bicycle shop to a motoring empire
The Rootes Group did not begin with a car. William Rootes senior sold bicycles and then motor cars in Kent, and his sons William and Reginald turned the sales side into the biggest motor distributor in Britain by the mid 1920s. Selling other people’s cars taught the brothers exactly what the market wanted, and at the end of the decade they used that knowledge, and City backing, to buy their way into making them.
The shopping list came quickly: Hillman and Humber, along with the Commer commercial-vehicle business, came under Rootes control around the turn of the 1930s, Karrier followed in 1934, the remains of the once-glorious Sunbeam and Talbot companies were picked up in 1935, and Singer completed the set in 1956. William, later Lord Rootes, was the salesman and front man; Reginald ran the business. Between them they built Britain’s clearest example of a badge-engineered range, one sensible set of mechanicals wearing five badges at five prices.
Rootes Group at auction
What a classic Rootes Group sells for at auction
- Median sale, 2025
- £9,140 Down from £10,920 in 2021
- Sales in 2025
- 180 The most we have recorded in a year
- Sold when offered
- 72.2% Of the cars put up for auction since 1998
- The record
- £869k Tourist Trophy Race Car, Gooding & Co, August 2024
The badges and the pecking order
The genius of Rootes was range discipline. Hillman sold the volume cars, honest family saloons like the Minx. Singer, once an independent maker of some standing, became the better-trimmed Hillman for the buyer who wanted wood on the dashboard. Sunbeam carried the sporting reputation earned by the pre-war Sunbeam company into rally-winning coupes and roadsters. Humber sat at the top, building the limousines and stately saloons that carried ministers and managing directors. Commer and Karrier did the working vehicles, the classic vans and trucks of the group.
The system had a wartime interlude of real consequence: Rootes ran shadow factories building aero engines and armoured vehicles, and Humber staff cars carried British commanders through the war. When peace returned, the group poured its output into the post-war export drive.
The Loewy look and the Audax years
In the 1950s Rootes hired the American industrial-design consultancy of Raymond Loewy, and the result was the Audax family, the crisp, transatlantic styling worn by the Hillman Minx Series cars, the Sunbeam Rapier and their relatives from 1955 onwards. These were the group’s confident years: the Rapier won rallies outright, the Sunbeam Alpine gave Rootes a proper sports car with film-star exposure, and the Minx sold in the hundreds of thousands, with licence-built versions made as far away as Japan.
The range logic ran right through the decade that followed. The Humber Sceptre began life as a proposed Sunbeam, the Alpine grew a Ford-V8 alter ego in the Sunbeam Tiger, and nearly every car in the showroom, whatever its badge, traced back to the same well-proven floorpans and the durable 1725cc engine.
The Imp, Linwood and the fall
The Hillman Imp was the boldest thing Rootes ever did and the thing that broke it. An all-new rear-engined small car with an all-aluminium overhead-cam engine, built in an all-new factory at Linwood in Scotland because government regional policy steered the investment there, it was a gamble three times over, and every part of it cost more than planned. The car matured into a fine small saloon, but the early quality troubles and the half-empty factory drained the group at exactly the wrong moment.
Chrysler, hunting a European foothold, bought in during 1964, took control in 1967 and put its own name over the door in 1970. The badges went out one by one: Singer in 1970, Humber and Hillman by 1976, when the last Sceptre and the final Hillman-badged cars were built, and Sunbeam ended as a model name on a Chrysler hatchback. In 1978 Peugeot bought Chrysler’s European operations, and the surviving models were rebadged Talbot. The story of the group’s last mainstream saloon, the Hillman Avenger, sold under three badges in eleven years, is the whole decline in one car.
Buying and owning a Rootes classic
The practical news is good. Rootes engineering was conventional where it mattered, the cars share parts across badges, and the well-proven 1494cc and 1725cc four-cylinder engines are tough, simple and well supported by specialists. Club support across the group is strong, and most models remain cheaper to buy than their BMC and Ford rivals of the same era, the Imp and Minx especially.
The watch-points are the usual ones for unitary-bodied cars of the period: structural rust in sills, floors and spring hangers, scarce model-specific trim, and, on the Imp, a cooling system that must be right. All the cars here are old enough for historic vehicle status.
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