Rootes Group

The Rootes Group was a British automobile manufacturer and, separately, a major motor distributors and dealers business. From headquarters in the West End of London, the manufacturer was based in the Midlands and the distribution and dealers business in the south of England.

In the decade 1928-38, brothers William and Reginald Rootes, made prosperous by their very successful motor car distribution and servicing business, were keen to enter manufacturing for closer control of the products they were selling. With the financial support of Prudential Assurance, the two brothers bought many well-known British motor manufacturers—including Hillman, Humber, Singer, Sunbeam, Talbot, Commer and Karrier. At its height in 1960, Rootes Group had manufacturing plants in the Midlands at Coventry and Birmingham, in southern England at Acton, Luton and Dunstable, and a brand-new plant in the west of Scotland at Linwood. From its offices in Devonshire House on Piccadilly in central London, it controlled exports and international distribution for Rootes and other motor manufacturers, as well as its own local distribution and service operations in London, Kent, Birmingham and Manchester. There were assembly plants in nine countries outside the UK.

Rootes Group was under-capitalised in its last years and unable to survive industrial relations problems at its facilities and losses from the 1963 introduction of a new aluminium-engined small car, the Hillman Imp. By mutual agreement, from mid-1964, Rootes Motors was taken over in stages by US auto company Chrysler; it acquired control from the Rootes family by 1967 and refashioned the group as Chrysler United Kingdom. By the end of 1978, the last of the various elements of Chrysler UK had been resold to French automotive group Peugeot SA, which itself subsequently merged with Chrysler to form Stellantis.