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.
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