In the Riley post we looked at recently, I stated that BMC were past masters at badge-engineering – and they certainly were. But in the British automotive landscape of the ‘60s, there was another great practiser of this dark art: the Rootes Group. With the marques Hillman, Humber, Singer and Sunbeam in their arsenal, they sure knew a thing or two about mixing, matching and merchandizing the same car several times over.
In the Rootes version of the Sloane Ladder, Hillman played the part of Chevrolet, Sunbeam was a sort of Oldsmobile equivalent (albeit on the sportier side) and Humber was the Cadillac-like top dog. Singer, which had been absorbed in the mid-‘50s, was groomed into a kind of Buick, one rung below Humber.
The Humber brand really was the premium Rootes badge, with an array of large 6-cyl. saloons and limousines favoured by lord-mayors and military brass since before the war. But as the ‘50s wore on, the brand was increasingly applied on smaller vehicles as well. After all, it’s simple enough to add a bunch of chrome trim and wood veneer to a family car and market it as a luxury compact. GM took ages to figure this out with the Seville and the Cimarron, while the Brits were doing this as a matter of course by the mid-‘50s. (I’m joshing for comic effect, of course — Detroit had plenty of badge-engineering experience dating all the way back to the pre-war era, but it seemed less obviously contrived and cookie-cutter than the Rootes and BMC products of the ’50s and ’60s, or indeed the Big Three’s output in the ’80s.)
Step 1: the base. In 1961, the Hillman Super Minx came out. It was a LWB version of the standard Minx. So far, so what. Step 2: set phasers to “gentrify” and add the Singer Vogue (bottom pics) – the same exact body shell and engine, but with added gingerbread and a higher price tag.
Step 3: simmer for a couple of years and then launch the Humber Sceptre: take a Singer Vogue, touch up the front end trim a bit, add a racier roofline, slather the cabin in leather and finish off the Sunbeam version of the Minx engine (i.e. twin carbs) and you have the ultimate small luxury Rootes product. And voilà, British Brougham avant la lettre.
The “brilliant,” “magnificent” and “superbly equipped” Humber Sceptre was launched in the first weeks of 1963 – I’m guessing they did it as soon as they could, given the deepening financial hole the group was in at the time, any new revenue stream would have been direly needed.
So does that mean that badge-engineering is a sign of desperation more than anything else? Not necessarily, but in the case of Rootes and BMC / British Leyland (and later GM, Mazda and Fiat-Chrysler), it certainly was.
And so it was that a little over a year after as this Sceptre was launched, Rootes started the process of being gobbled up by Chrysler. But that’s another story (one that has been extensively and expertly covered on CC by none other that Roger Carr in this post, so let’s move on to other matters.)
From a technical perspective then, the Humber Sceptre was nothing new under the sun. We had a 1.6 litre OHV 4-cyl. fed by two Zenith carburators providing the rear wheels with 80hp (gross, though some literature claims 84) via a four-speed manual (with overdrive), a live rear axle suspended by half-elliptic leaf springs and front disc brakes. A single-carb version was available, but very few were made.
The whole purpose of the car was to dazzle with styling traits rather than content, which could be obtained in the much cheaper Hillman or Singer alternatives. Features such as the finlets emanating from the roofline or those dramatic taillight housings are an illustration of this emphasis on details.
If we’ll beg Paddington’s pardon for intruding here, the plush interior was also one of the Humber’s big plus points. However, unlike BMC who stuck with timber to display added value and signify traditional British luxury, Rootes went for a more contemporary approach with this dash.
All in all, it’s a tasteful and fairly up-to-date (if a tad generic) cabin, looking a lot more 1963 than the car’s exterior, which screams 1959. Said styling – the front end, in particular – was revamped pretty quickly: in the aunumn of 1965, even as the new 1725cc engine made its debut, the Sceptre was given a thinly upgraded version of the Hillman Super Minx’s front end.
We’ve had a look at one of those Mark II cars already: I tend to prefer that face rather than the extremely fussy and chrome-heavy mug of these earlier models. In that post, I also did a comparison table (for MY 1966), pitting the Humber against eleven other “sporty” saloons in the 1.5 to 2-litre segment. Well, here we go again, but this time, we’ll see what one could purchase, saloon-wise, going £100 under or over the Sceptre’s £997 MSRP in late ’63 / early ’64, so there won’t be too much overlap.
Interesting that cheaper 6-cyl. executive sleds like the Austin, the Vauxhall or the Zodiac competed in the same price bracket as more modest fare, such as the VW Type 3 or the F102. In terms of size, displacement and performance, the Humber was closer to the Peugeot, the Taunus and the Volvo. Those were better-built cars than the Sceptre, but it did outdo them in terms of bling. This gave the Humber a slight edge domestically, but given how import duties worked in those days, the Sceptre would have a tough sale outside of the British Isles.
Well, except this one, that is: the single “5” on that license plate tells us this car has been in Japan since the ‘60s. I guess a few left Blighty for exotic locales, and an unknown (but probably quite tiny) number even left as CKD kits, but I’m willing to bet that for every one that left, ten stayed in the UK, where the Humber marque actually meant something. Incidentally, these were not even exported to Australia, where their place was taken by the Humber Vogue – i.e. the Singer, but with a Humber badge.
All of 17k units of these quirky machines found takers in 1963-65. Not a great sales success, but a bit better than the facelifted Mk II (only 11k from late 1965 to the summer of 1967). After that came the Arrow platform, a completely new car eschewing any of its predecessors’ charming (but by then quite dated) late ‘50s styling cues. And what did they do? A Hillman version, a Singer version and a Humber version. What’s the definition of insanity again?
Related posts:
Curbside Classic: 1966 Humber Sceptre Mark II – The Humbler Humber, by T87
Curbside Classic: 1966 Hillman Super Minx – Rooting For Rootes, by Roger Carr
Cohort Pic(k) of the Day: Singer Vogue – Raised Eyebrows, by PN
Automotive History: The Rise, Decline and Fall Of The Rootes Group – “I Am The Engine, Reggie Is The Steering And Brakes”, by Roger Carr
Always nice to read about Rootes cars!
I read somewhere that the Sceptre was designed to be a Sunbeam, and a successor to the ageing Sunbeam Rapier. At the/a last minute the decision was made to make it a Humber and to let the Rapier soldier on for a few more years.
That would explain its sporty-ish parts like the dash and two carburettors.
Regarding the dash, the one picture regrettably does not show that the main instruments were housed in two big separate pods, the rest of the instruments and switches on a large big centre console. A quite unique, modern, sporty sixties design – not just “a more contemporary approach”.
sorry – wrong pic. That one is missing its glovebox lid. This one is better
I had one of these in the early to mid nineties in the Mark 2 guise as my Cornwall car, at the time I split my tme between Cornwall and London, I had a Mini 1000 for my London car. My abiding memory’s of it are it handled quite well for a car of its era, it had good disc brakes and a bit of pep (1725 engine, twin cars and a sightly bumpier camshaft). The thing that you can’t get from photographs is the quality of the car, nice panel fit and paint finish all round, nice solid doors that closed with a reassuring click, and the dashboard was made of separate well fitted alloy die castings individually painted and mounted on a steel subframe. I ended up selling the car to an acquaintance as I didn’t drive it enough. Sadly as I understand it, he didn’t maintain the car properly, parked it outdoors on his drive after a minor issue an left it to rust for a couple of years before it disappeared, I don’t want to think where. A waste of a good car.
So much fun to read work. Outside of British TV shows aired here in the States, these were unseen. This on is bearly driven
The front end and taillight treatments suggest a MUCH bigger car — something more like a Mohs Ostentatienne — so it’s jarring to then see it in profile. Kind of delightful in fits and starts, but it doesn’t exactly hang together.
Nice enough looking cars.
The Westminister and Pooj actually look good.
We are currently getting upscale Mitsus and Kias with dreadful looks.
Ideally, Saint Trump’s gutting the EPA will allow hot hatches from Europe…… unless “someone” lobbies for huge tariffs
That Humber is the nice looking , the best of the lot
Small point on the Singer Vogue: it was the first of this range to be launched in July 1961. The Minx arrived some months later in October.
I certainly agree that these look like they should have been launched a couple of years earlier; by the time they arrived others were abandoning those kind of wrap-round screens.
In olden days when I was just a lad, I had a book of British Cars. It may be hard for some of our younger readers to imagine a time when Britain had enough makes and models to fill a book, but I assure you there was such a time. About half an inch thick – the book, not the time. And in it were certain cars I never saw here down under, but which stuck in my memory like a burr. This was one.
The more you look, the more you realize it goes beyond badge engineering. Not only did they give this thing a new roofline, an even more awkward interpretation of the original theme, but it also gained new rear fenders with both horizontal and vertical fins. I suspect from the photo of the Singer that front end sheetmetal might not interchange between them either. So it’s more like a new, alternative bodyshell with carryover doors and boot lid, with the original 1961 Super MInx remaining in production as well as the non-Super regular Minx from 1957 (which wasn’t that much smaller), along with all its Humber, Sunbeam and Singer variants. That can’t have been inexpensive to develop and tool. Or produce.
Score points for differentiation though: BMC wouldn’t have done that much. I can’t imagine them doing a whole new roof to fit around the same doors. Lose points for execution though: as well as being out of date for 1963, it just looks so awkwardly done. Like someone in manangement said “It must have this, this and this.” without looking at the final result, just passing it to production.
And Tatra, can I just say how much I enjoy the fruits of your labours in researching the cars’ context in your articles? Today’s table of competitors is perhaps the most startling. To think for £30-50 less you could have a Zodiac or Cresta, larger six cylinder cars. The Humber looks awfully expensive for a 1.6 litre four – gotta recoup all those tooling costs somehow I guess. But then for about £100 more you could get the thoroughly up to date new big Triumph. A lot of solid competiton from overseas too.
Which makes me wonder why a Japanese person chose this particular car back in 1963.
I was thinking much the same on the differentiation front, Peter, but in a way they could have taken it further by making it a two door coupe. New doors wouldn’t be needed as they already had those from the convertible and, as you said, the roof and rear quarters were different anyway. That might have made it a more obvious Rapier replacement.
It looks like a British Nash to me.