The larger saloon was a consistent feature of every British motor manufacturer’s range from the late 1940s to the late 1960s and beyond. The Austin Westminster, Morris Six and Isis, many iterations of Ford Zodiac, the Vauxhall Cresta and later Viscount, and sitting a little lower down the order, the Standard Vanguard. Go a little upmarket and there was the Wolseley 6/99 and later 6/110, twinned with the Austin Westminster, go further up market and you could have a Rover 3 Litre (P5) or the Vanden Plas Princess R, or perhaps a Jaguar 2.4 Litre or 3.4 Litre (the Mk 1 or its derivative, the better known Mk 2). These are listed in ascending order of golf club respect. Sitting somewhere between the Wolseley and the Rover was the Humber Super Snipe; sitting closer to the Ford Zodiac and Vauxhall Cresta was the Humber Hawk. Against the Princess R was the Humber Imperial.
Hawk, Super Snipe and Imperial were all old Humber names, with use dating back to the 1930s. The first Snipe was a large saloon powered by 3.5 litre six cylinder engine and either a standard body from Pressed Steel Co or a coach built body, often from Rootes’s in house coachbuilder Thrupp and Maberly. Various versions existed throughout the 1930s, including a larger engine Super Snipe and a Snipe Imperial.
Rootes did a steady trade in cars for mayors and other official users; General Montgomery used one, nicknamed Old Faithful and now preserved, in Africa, then in Normandy and to cross the Rhine in 1945. Here it is coming back to Coventry in late 1945.
Rootes brought the Super Snipe name back in 1945, alongside a new Hawk as well, essentially as refreshed versions of the pre-war cars. The first true new post war cars came in 1948, with a new chassis clothed in brand new and very different Raymond Loewy bodywork.
The major differentiation between the Hawk and the Super Snipe was the engine – the Hawk made do with a 2.2 litre 4 cylinder with 70 bhp to pull 3100lb along. The Super Snipe had six cylinder of 4.1 litres, shared with a Commer van, with 116bhp but substantially more torque. Mind you, it weighed 4000lbs, so the benefit may have been in refinement rather than performance. It certainly wasn’t in economy.
The Super Snipe, with its longer straight six, had an increase of 10 inches in its 115 inch wheelbase, a longer nose and a longer, reprofiled tail. All in, Rootes built a total of 45,000 examples of these, but the days of the chassis frame in this area of the market were ending. The next Hawk, and Super Snipe, would be a monocoque design.
The Hawk came first, in late 1957. The four cylinder engine was carried over but little else was. There was a monocoque, with wishbone front suspension, leaf springs at the back, recirculating ball steering, an option of manual or automatic transmission, both with column changes, and all-round drum brakes. The styling was another major break for Rootes, with Loewy not involved, although his influence is arguably still there.
The styling was officially credited to Ted Green, Rootes’ head of styling, and his no 2 Ted White, though the stylists of the 1955 Chevrolet might also make a claim. The links need little identification, or explanation given Rootes’s history of American influence. Arguably, every Rootes car from 1930 to the 1970 Hillman Avenger had some American influence in its style.
Rootes had a genuine novelty for the Super Snipe, which came a year later in late 1958. The Commer van engine was dropped as a new engine had been developed just for the Super Snipe, and Rootes took a surprising route to get there.
The Coventry motor industry was always a close knit environment, and one business in the area that is now less remembered was luxury car and aero-engine builder Armstrong-Siddeley, who were then building the Sapphire 236 and 236. These were traditionally coachbuilt on a chassis, and the two versions differed principally in engine. The 234 had a 2.3 litre four cylinder engine with around 120 bhp; the 236 an unrelated 2.3 litre six cylinder with around 85bhp. One was intended as a sports saloon, one more of touring saloon; in 3 years, fewer than 1500 cars were built.
But something attracted Rootes. That something was Armstrong-Siddeley’s engineering ability to design a modern engine, and their capacity to produce it. Rootes commissioned Armstong-Siddeley to design a 2.6 litre six cylinder engine based on the 236’s engine, and largely build and assemble it in the Parkside factory in Coventry, just for a new Humber Super Snipe.
The result was a straight six, 2.6 litres, with two overhead valves per cylinder and a four bearing crankshaft. Power was 112 bhp at a fairly racy 5000 rpm (how many Humber drivers got to 5000 rpm?). It was connected to a three speed column shift gearbox, with options for overdrive or Borg-Warner automatic. Visually, aside from a more complex front grille, the first cars were practically indistinguishable from the Hawk, sharing the same body with no wheelbase stretch this time.
The interiors were, unsurprisingly, the traditional British wood’n’leather, with a classic Rootes style dash.
Rootes did not publicly acknowledge the Armstrong-Siddeley link, though some of the press “noticed” it in the way only a tame press can. Armstong-Siddeley later used a 4 litre version of the same engine in the Star Sapphire.
The Series 1 came to the market in late 1958. This car was seen by Brent Dean, at a guess in British Columbia, and is the first Super Snipe I have seen on the road (or close to it), as opposed to at a car show for many, many years. Canada was a relatively strong market for Rootes in the 1950s, so spotting a Super Snipe there with its British interior and American styling maybe isn’t a great surprise.
There can’t be many though – I haven’t got exact numbers but Rootes built around 70,000 Hawks and Super Snipes in total over 10 years, so perhaps 1000 a year to Canada? Am I being generous?
The manufacturing logistics for the Hawk and Super Snipe were fairly laborious. The bodies were pressed, assembled and painted at Rootes’s pressing business British Light Steel Pressings (BSLP) in Acton in west London, and then trucked to Ryton near Coventry for trimming and mechanical assembly at Rootes’ main assembly plant. The six cylinder engine was assembled by Armstrong-Siddeley using blocks and crankshafts cast ands machined by Rootes themselves.
The estate car was handled differently, and perhaps more complex still. Initially, they were assembled at the Singer factory in Birmingham using bodies pressed and assembled in Acton. In 1959, Rootes centralised their spares parts business in the Singer factory, so final assembly of the estate car was contracted out to Carbodies Ltd in Coventry, a specialist short run builder, converter and sub-contractor Rootes had used for many years, using some BLSP supplied pressings and sub-assemblies. The estate’s styling shows clear Chevrolet Nomad hints, as well as the Rambler that has been linked to it here previously.
The Super Snipe went to a series II in 1959, with an enlarged 3.0 litre engine, front disc brakes and optional power steering. Visually, there was little change – essentially this was confined to badging and is what enables me to identify this car as a Series II. Power was now 121 bhp and torque 162 lbft, up from 138 lbft and available at a lower engine speed. There remained the option of limousine divider should you wish to have a chauffeur, an option also available on the four cylinder Hawk, but not on a Ford Zodiac.
Rootes were perhaps the most ardent of the UK manufacturers in following the annual model year change, often perceived in Europe as being an American practice.
For 1960, the Super Snipe Series III got a new longer nose which fully distinguished it from the Hawk. There were four headlamps with a lot of chrome, and a three inch extension to support it all. Little else changed.
In 1962 the rear window was gently reshaped, to give the Series IV and in 1964 a reprofiled roofline and rear window treatment, gaining a rear quarter light in exchange for a wrap around rear window, identified the Series V. The Hawk got the same revisions and the more compact Hillman Super Minx and Singer Vogue got similar treatment at the same time. For the truly pedantic, there was also an Series VA, with an enlarged front windscreen, for 1966 but sales were now down to around 1000 a year. Still, 1960s Prime Minister Harold Wilson liked it, and some say he bought one from the Government when he left office. File that under “long shot” I suggest.
Some police forces used the estate cars, which had advantages in size, capacity and performance as well as some rear view mirror credibility.
In a final effort to garner some interest, Rootes reintroduced the old Humber Imperial name, for a fully luxury specification version for the Super Snipe Series V and VA, above. This came with a vinyl roof, automatic transmission and the contents of the Super Snipe options list, as a response to the Austin Westminster based Vanden Plas Princess.
The Super Snipe, Imperial and Hawk were all discontinued in 1967, as Rootes’ new masters from Chrysler tried to get their heads around the business. This killed any ideas Coventry had of adding an American V8 to the Super Snipe, as had been done to take the Sunbeam Alpine into the Tiger. Some prototypes were built and one is said to be still around, somewhere.
The Austin Westminster and Wolseley 6/110, perhaps the closest competitor to the Super Snipe, were discontinued at this time too. The big Vauxhalls, the Cresta and gussied up Viscount, endured in declining numbers to 1972. Even the car Rootes probably aspired to compete with most, the Rover 3 Litre and later 3.5 Litre was allowed to retire unreplaced in 1973. The market was moving on.
From 1963, Humber had offered the Sceptre, an upmarket derivative of the Hillman Super Minx, which in retrospect can be seen as perhaps the first attempt at a more affordable take on the compact sport-executive car best embodied then by the Rover 2000 and Triumph 2000. Sceptres, in two generations, the second based on the Hillman Hunter (Sunbeam Arrow) lasted until 1976, when Chrysler shut the brand.
I have an affinity for Rootes cars, and like the concept of this one a lot – but find the styling to be as generic as anything every made in England. I remember the expression from Churchill (I believe) – a pudding with no theme.
But then the interior shown in that black/red example more than makes up for the lack of character outside. That photo shows an interesting quirk – the way they painted the interior door – was the white to go with the interior headliner? The two-toning of the inner door bears no relationship to the two-toning of the outside, and would be a production engineer’s nightmare.
The 1976 Chevette my family had when I was a teen was like that – metallic blue outside, but painted white around the inside of the side window frames (including the sill) to match the white with blue dash/carpeting interior. Most Chevettes had exterior body color paint in these areas, but if you paid extra for the Custom Interior Group or whatever Chevy called it, the paint visible from the inside was matched to the interior color instead.
I like how in the auto-show pic the Humber Hawk is parked right in front of the Studebaker Hawk…
I have inspected around six or so Super Snipes when I wanted one back around 1995 and not one had that white paint inside.
At the time I wanted either a Super Snipe or a six cilinder Farina. I ended up with an Austin A110 Westminster – still have it.
“Everything from UK is generic” is a bit sweeping?
Yes, we had our share and more of US and European inspired design, but Jaguar (various, 1936 on), Rover SD1, sundry Aston Martin, Leyland Princess, TR7 for example were not generic.
May not have been commercially or technically successful either…..
Sorry, I was trying to say that this was a really generic design from a country not known for those. British cars could be stately, beautiful or even ugly, but they were almost never generic. This was an exception.
A-ha! Now I get what you meant and youve got a good point
I think the big Humbers probably look more generic if you’re used to American car stylings. In the UK the Hawk and Snipe were up against the trad and podgy Austins (later the knife-edge finny Austins), the more garish Fords and Vauxhalls, the stately P5s and the racier Jags, so I think in that company it would have stood out, though very much as a safe and mature choice.
A repaint?
My friend used a Huber Hawk with auto transmission as a minicab in East London back around 1973. It was deemed as old fashioned even then. Wonderful car though and rare to see one these days.
OOPS, slip of the finger ! Should have been Humber of course !
Just yesterday I sold my Commer Walk Tru van. This has a link to these Humbers: it has the same 6 inline cilinder engine from the Super Snipe, though with one tiny carb instead of the two for the Humber.
Was sorry to see it go as the engine was quite magnificent in this huge van. The six cil version can be distinguished from the 4 cil by having an extended nose.
I don’t think I could have parted with that, superb ! I hope the new owner enjoys it as much as you obviously did
A local collector has one of these walkthrus it has a diesel transplant so I dont know whether it was a four or six, his is truly huge as its been extended at the rear and camperised, he talked of putting a 2.5 Mitsubishi diesel from his Delica van in it as the powertrain is good but chassis rust put it off the road, he also has several rusted out Supersnipes among the 200+ Rootes vehicles in his hoard so anything is possible.
Thanks for this excellent look at a name/car that has always intrigued me but never got around to really reading up on. That 2.6 L six from A-S is interesting; it looks to be a pushrod hemi head of sorts.
This class of cars really got hit by the inevitable consolidation and influx of the German brands.
I never cease to be attracted by the traditional wood and leather British interior. I’m imagining a Humber-sized Cadillac with that interior, a Seville of the 1950s. 🙂
Yes Paul it is a HEMI.
You know, I wouldn’t mind a ~1950 Super Snipe, but I’ve never even seen one in person, so that’s unlikely. 🙂
My copy of Graham Robson’s “A-Z of Works Rally Cars” has a blurb on Gatsonides finishing second in the 1950 Monte Carlo Rally in a Super Snipe. Ever since I read that fact the first time, I’ve had a low-key longing to check one out.
Gatsonides was the father of the speed camera; hence the (British) nickname “gatso”
British cars didn’t carry import duties into Canada until the 1967 Auto Pact, so while a Super Snipe would have cost as much as a Cadillac in the US, it would have been more competitively priced against US premium brands in Canada. And there were lots of expats who preferred English cars.
I drove a Series III in Victoria, BC in the late ’90s. I saw another one for sale there a few years ago. I knew of a couple in Southern Ontario when I lived there in the early ’00s.
My sense is that Humbers were significantly better built than the BMC, Ford or Vauxhall alternatives. I read somewhere they kept a Mercedes-Benz at the factory for reference. Only Rover would have been competitive on build quality in that class in the UK.
Mine had been the subject of an amateur restoration at some point, probably needed an engine rebuild and had a finicky voltage regulator. Also the windscreen rubber had perished and water leaked into the electrical system in heavy rains. But still it felt like a bit of a tank, and kept on going with relatively little maintenance.
I sold it on EBay in 2003 to a father and son who were going to tackle it as a project after it had been siting in storage for a few years. Never saw it again. Parts would have been a real problem.
Ive owned and driven a lot of British Ford Vauxhall and BMC car of all sizes, Rootes car were better made and mechanically more durable, hence why they are now scarce here they just kept going untill it wasnt worth owning them as rust took over.
Yes, Rootes cars had a good name in 60s Australia. A friend of the family had a late 50s Minx, and even as a kid, I could tell it was a much better built car than my Mother’s crappy Austin Lancer.
I used to love the the warning lights on the instrument panel of the Minx, they were large and very colorful, with the tell tale turn indicator a beautiful green color.
Fun, fun article. all those “ads” remind me of the “Rambler ads” through the years.
Having a “moment more” to think; maybe , more so “Studebaker ads”.
There are still a lot of Supersnipes on the road in NZ not usually as daily drivers their fuel consumption is quite horrendous but wonderfully smooth comfortable cars, Fewer Hawks survived they tended to fall into the dunga/beater category in later life and good ones became scarce,build quality was superb for the era Even my downscale Superminx has doors that once let go lock shut without any force no door slamming required with Rootes products,
The Chrysler takeover did Rootes no favours and Ive seen online an original 273 V8 Supersnipe prototype it still exists though around 6 were built, several more have been shade treed into existance, They would have been great cars but the decision was made to import the Aussie VIP Valiant instead.
22 years ago I hear about 1960 and it was owned a little old lady whom had left it siting under cover. Need clutch, brakes and nothing else. no rust. I asked how much she said 800 bucks . It hadn’t run in 10 years at that point. I said I ll buy it and she said 800 bucks. I said next week is pay day . She said ok and by next week her son had stuck his noose in the deal and the price went to 6 grand. Sadly I had to walk away from a car that had been babied all it’s life . Never driven in winter etc. I was young , broke and full of fun .
Thanks Roger. I’ve always wondered about these.
I remember seeing quite a few of these around back in my childhood. While they had lovely interiors (which I never rode in), I never liked the looks, kind of awkward. The fifties-curvy body really looked old hat by the mid sixties, even with the new roof. The VA didn’t just gain a bigger windscreen, they also reshaped the A-pillar with some slope to it. I hadn’t realized the roof changes came in two stages.
And is that an opera lamp on the B-pillar of the Imperial? 🙂 Brougham!
That would be an orange turn signal repeater light.
Like the Triumph 2000. Of course. I should have thought of that. 🙂 I never saw an Imperial in the metal, only Super Snipes.
Thaks for a great read, Roger! We saw some of the Rootes Group stateside. I always admired the Humber. A friend who lived in England in her halcyon days speaks fondly of the comfort of the Humber. If you decided to write a treatise on Van den Plas, I would love it. I saw my first Princess in 1967 in Bridgeport, Connecticut and wondered at the well-appointed vehicle.
Interesting the cars in the ads, with the exception of the first one, have whitewall tyres, same goes for the cars at the Auto shows.
While the other cars photographed recently, including the magazine test cars have black walls.
I think the cars look a bit dowdy with black wall tyres, that last ad for the black Imperial with it’s narrow band whitewalls looks particularly sharp.
Humber offered smaller cars in New Zealand since the 30s local importer and assembler Todd motors retrimmed and rebadged Hillman Minxs as initially Humber 10s later when OHV engines appeared that Minx became the Humber 80, Superminxs became Humber 90s Rootes had seperate dealerships for its various brands here and Humber dealers needed an entry level car,
The Snipes and Hawks were fairly expensive cars when new never mind the outlandish fuel costs to drive them about, $2.60 per litre x 4.5 for a imp gallon and 15mpg puts Snipes above my pay grade.
I mean this with no disrespect, but the best part of this car is the name. Not just any Snipe, but a Super Snipe. I do still have my one-owner Dinky Toys Humber Hawk police car. Runs great with a little push start.
I love the idea though of a well-to-do family discussing a forthcoming motoring trip, and deciding “We’ll take the Snipe!”.
Even better, I assume in Germany it was called ‘der Superschneip!’. Who wouldn’t want one of those? 🙂
Is it just me or does the Super Snipe look sort of like a miniaturized ’55 Hudson? If Hudson had offered a second-generation Jet, I could see it looking pretty much like that.
This garage used to have Sunbeam up there as well
Rootes didn’t expect Humber to die in 1967. They were busily developing a replacement that would take a V6 engine and sit above the Hunter. Unfortunately, Chrysler’s dead hand soon meant the project went off the rails and ended up producing the Chrysler 180. I happened to work in a Chrysler garage at the time and they refused point blank to stock or sell the 180. It was DOA.
CC has the full story here but read through your fingers. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/carshow-classic-1973-chrysler-180-british-french-american-or-just-forgotten/
In the German ad, the central illustration shows the car’s nicely appointed red interior. The man in the back seat on the driver’s side has secret knowledge; he looks threatening, like a Bond villain.
https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/arthur-calwell
In Australia, it was while he was sitting in a Super Snipe that in 1966, an attempt was made to assassinate the leader of the opposition, Arthur Calwell (1896–1973; leader of the Australian Labor Party 1960-1967). The weapon used was a sawn-off .22 rifle and although fired at close-range, the Humber’s closed window deflected the bullet, absorbing most of the energy and Calwell suffered only minor injuries from flying glass. Except for the Rolls-Royce Phantom V & VIs used for vice-regal ceremonial events, the Super-Snipes were the last of the British cars used as executive transport in the Commonwealth’s fleet, replaced by Ford Galaxies which were available with 289 and 390 engines.
Ford had since 1965 been locally assembling the full-sized Galaxies for the executive market but tariffs and the maintenance of the Australian currency peg meant profitability was marginal, the locally concocted Fairlane (introduced in 1967 on the Falcon platform with the wheelbase stretched to 116″) much more lucrative, produced as it was with high local content and a miniscule development cost. The Fairlane name was chosen because of the success the company had had in selling first the full-sized Fairlanes (nicknamed by locals as the “tank Fairlane”) between 1959-1962 and later the intermediate version (1962-1965).
The massive success of the 1967 car and its successors prompted Ford to cease local assembly of the Galaxie and revert to importing fully built-up cars for the small segment of the market which wanted the bigger vehicles, including the government executive fleets. Available with both small and big-block V8s, the Galaxies, later badged as Galaxie-LTDs, would remain available until 1973 when Ford Australia created their own LTD (1973-2007), giving the Falcon’s wheelbase a final stretch to 121″ and adding the novelty of a 24 hour analogue clock, lashings of real leather and fake timber along with the inevitable status symbol of the 1970s: the padded vinyl roof. For decades, the local LTD would be the backbone of the Commonwealth’s fleet.
Worthy but dull is how I would describe those cars. I always had the impression that Rootes Group never quite understood the importance of a halo car. That engine on its free-flowing hemi head was capable of much, much more than a paltry 121 hp. A sportier version might have given the smaller Jags a run for their money, and it’s not like Rootes did not have an engineer (Mike Parkes) capable of properly sorting out such a car.
Yes, I am aware of the Tiger but that was an accident and happened despite the corporate policy.
Rootes didn’t love cars. They could have been producing ovens. The brothers were in awe of Detroit and created an absurd mini-GM with 4 car and 2 truck brands on quite small sales. They were the epitome of dull Fifties Britain and there was no place for them come the Seventies. The Japanese did dull and reliable by then, whilst the Hillman Avenger did constant unplanned roadside stops. The sad reality is nobody missed them.