Singer

Founded by George Singer who began manufacturing cars under licence from Lea-Francis, namely the 8 and 12 hp underfloor engined models. The company would soon lose direction upon the death of Singer, finding itself at the mercy of receivers. But remarkably the company survived, and began the manufacture of small but high quality cars such as the three-cylinder Ten.

In 1926 the Ten was renamed the “Senior”, so that an even smaller iteration could join the model line-up – it was naturally enough named the “Junior”. Both were successful, allowing Singer to acquire both the Calcott and Coventry Premier concerns, the added capacity allowing Singer to reach an all time high of 11,000 cars manufactured in a single year for 1927.

In 1932 the Junior was replaced by the Nine, this model proving to be very popular, particularly in sports car form. Continued financial difficulty would see the company embark on a rationalisation program that would see two factories close, and the bigger six cylinder cars dropped from the line-up. Following World War 2 Singer release the SM1500 saloon, however it never achieved sales expectations.

In 1955 the company was taken over by the Rootes Group, not surprisingly since Willian Rootes had served his apprenticeship with Singer many years before. After the takeover the marque was simply used as a marketing exercise, the “Singer” badge affixed to Hillman’s to denote their more up-market status. The Singer Gazelle was simply a Minx with better trim, but as the years went on the Singer name only served to confuse the purchaser – and so the name was dropped altogether in 1970.