Hispano-Suiza (Spanish for 'Spanish-Swiss') is a Spanish automotive company. It was founded in 1904 by Marc Birkigt and Damián Mateu as an automobile manufacturer and by the 1930s had several factories in Spain and one in France that produced luxury cars, aircraft engines, trucks and weapons.
In 1923, its French luxury car arm became a semi-autonomous partnership with the Spanish parent company. In 1937, the French arm was taken over by the French state for war production and after World War II continued as an independent aviation engine and components manufacturer under the Hispano-Suiza name. In 1968, the company was taken over by the aerospace company Snecma, which is now part of the French Safran Group. Meanwhile, during the Spanish Civil War, Hispano-Suiza's Spanish factories in Barcelona and Seville were taken over by both sides for war production. In 1946, its Spanish assets were taken over by the truck manufacturer ENASA.
Hispano Suiza Cars in Spain was relaunched by the same founding family (4th generation of the Suqué Mateu Family); the company is part of the Peralada Group that is also owned by the Suqué Mateu family. It reemerged in 2019 with a fully-electric 1,119 HP hypercar, the Hispano-Suiza Carmen.
Contents
History
Early years
In 1898, a Spanish artillery captain, Emilio de la Cuadra Albiol, started electric automobile production in Barcelona under the name of La Cuadra. In Paris, Emilio de la Cuadra met the Swiss engineer Marc Birkigt and hired him to work for the company in Spain. Under his direction, two types of La Cuadra gasoline-powered engine cars were started immediately, one equipped with a 4.5 hp single-cylinder explosion engine and another 1.1-litre two-cylinder model, 7.5 hp. In 1900, these two internal combustion engines were the first designed and built in Spain by La Cuadra from a Birkigt design. These cars had four wheels, the previous two directional, clutch mechanisms, 3-speed gearbox, chain drive and suspension by crossbows. Two complete vehicles were completed, and there were some more under construction. At some point in 1902, the ownership changed hands to José María Castro Fernández and became Fábrica Hispano-Suiza de Automóviles (Spanish for 'Spanish-Swiss Automobile Factory'), but this company went bankrupt in December 1903.
Another restructuring took place in 1904, creating La Hispano-Suiza Fábrica de Automóviles under Castro's direction, also based in Barcelona. Four new engines were introduced in the next year and a half – a 3.8-litre and 7.4-litre four-cylinder and a pair of big six-cylinder engines were produced. This company managed to avoid bankruptcy and its largest operations remained in Barcelona until 1946, where cars, trucks, buses, aero engines and weapons were produced. Other factories in Spain were at Ripoll, Seville, and Guadalajara.
In 1910, Jean Chassagne competed with a Hispano-Suiza together with works drivers Pilleveridier and Zucarelli in the Coupe des Voiturettes Boulogne and the Catalan Cup Races, gaining second and fourth places respectively. France was soon proving to be a larger market for Hispano-Suiza's luxury cars than Spain. In 1911, an assembly factory called Hispano France began operating in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret. Production was moved to larger factories at Bois-Colombes, under the name Hispano-Suiza, in 1914 and soon became Hispano-Suiza's main plant for producing the largest, most costly models.
World War I
With the start of World War I, Hispano-Suiza turned to the design and production of aircraft engines under the direction of Marc Birkigt. His chief engineer during this period was another Swiss, Louis Massuger. Traditionally, aircraft engines were manufactured by machining separate steel cylinders and then bolting these assemblies directly to the crankcase. Birkigt's novel solution, the Hispano-Suiza 8, called for the engine block to be formed from a single piece of cast aluminum, and into which thin steel liners were secured. Manufacturing an engine in this way simplified construction and resulted in a lighter, yet stronger more durable engine. Thus, Birkigt's new construction method created the first practical examples of what are commonly known today as "cast block" engines. His aluminum cast block V-8 design was also noteworthy for incorporating overhead camshafts, propeller reduction gearing and other desirable features that did not appear together on competitors' engines until the late 1920s. A major design feature added to the later HS.8B line was the use of a hollow propeller shaft for both the 8B and 8C gear-reduction versions, which when used for the HS.8C versions specifically engineered to accommodate one, allowed heavy calibre (usually 37 mm) projectiles to be fired through the hollow propeller shaft, avoiding the need for a synchronization gear, a feature used in future Hispano-Suiza military engines. Hispano-Suiza's aero engines, produced both at its own factories and under license, became the most commonly used aero engines in the French and British air forces, powering over half the alliance's fighter aircraft.
1918–1936
After World War I, Hispano-Suiza returned to automobile manufacturing, and in 1919 introduced the Hispano-Suiza H6. The H6 featured an inline 6-cylinder overhead camshaft engine based on the features of its V8 aluminium World War I aircraft engines and had coachwork done by well known coachbuilders like Hibbard & Darrin and D'Ieteren.
Licences for Hispano-Suiza patents were much in demand from prestige car manufacturers world-wide. Rolls-Royce used a number of Hispano-Suiza patents. For instance, for many years, Rolls-Royce installed Hispano-Suiza designed power brakes in its vehicles.
In 1923, the French arm of Hispano-Suiza was incorporated as the Société Française Hispano-Suiza, the Spanish parent company retaining control with 71% of the share capital. The French subsidiary was granted a large degree of financial and project independence to bring design and production direction into closer contact with its main markets, but overall direction remained at Barcelona. This arrangement increased the importance of the Bois-Colombes plant near Paris as Hispano-Suiza's premier luxury car plant, and while the Spanish operations continued to produce luxury cars (mostly the smaller, less expensive models), production in Spain moved increasingly to the production of buses, trucks and aircraft engines at several plants located around the country.
Through the 1920s and into the 1930s, Hispano-Suiza built a series of luxury cars with overhead camshaft engines of increasing performance. On the other hand, in the 1930s, Hispano-Suiza's V-12 car engines reverted to pushrod valve actuation to reduce engine noise.
During this time, Hispano-Suiza released the 37.2 Hispano-Suiza car built at the Bois-Colombes works.
The hood ornament atop the radiator after World War I was in the form of a stork, the symbol of the French province of Alsace, taken from the squadron emblem painted on the side of a Hispano-Suiza powered fighter aircraft that had been flown by the World War I French ace Georges Guynemer.
The Hispano-Suiza T49 was also designed and made by the Spanish arm of the company between 1924 and 1944; it was the Spanish production version of the H6B model with a 6-cylinder engine of 8,000 cm3, 160 hp and a maximum speed of 177 km / h.
Spanish Civil War and WWII
After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the autonomous government of Catalonia, on behalf of the Second Spanish Republic, collectivized control of Hispano-Suiza's Spanish factories and placed the company on a war footing. The company was divided into three sections:
aircraft engines and cannons
cars and trucks
machine tools
Because of the international isolation of the Spanish republic, the Spanish arm of the company suffered from shortages.
In 1937, the French government took control of the French subsidiary of Hispano-Suiza with a 51 per cent share of the capital for the provision of war materiel, renaming the company La Société d’exploitation des matériels Hispano-Suiza. In 1938, the French company ceased automobile production and concentrated on aircraft engine production. At the time, Hispano-Suiza had just introduced a new series of water-cooled V-12 engines and the Hispano-Suiza 12Y was in great demand for practically every type of French aircraft. However, without the Spanish factories, Hispano-Suiza lacked the capacity to deliver enough engines for the rapidly growing French air force, and many new French fighter aircraft remained grounded for the lack of an engine when World War II began.
A development of the era were a series of 20 mm autocannon, first the Hispano-Suiza HS.9, followed by the Hispano-Suiza HS.404. The 404 was licensed for production in Britain and equipped almost all RAF fighter aircraft during the war. Production was also set up in the US, but these versions never matured even though the USAAC and US Navy both wanted to use it in place of their existing .50 BMG weapons. A lesser-known success was the Hispano-Suiza HS.820, a higher performance 20 mm design that was also used in the US as the M139. A variation of the 20 mm guns used on the Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircraft were produced by International Harvester. In 1970 Hispano-Suiza sold their armaments division to Oerlikon, the HS.820 becoming the KAD.
In 1940, Hispano-Suiza, together with the Spanish bank Banco Urquijo and a group of Spanish industrial companies, founded the Sociedad Ibérica de Automóviles de Turismo (S.I.A.T.). This led to Spain's first mass-production car maker, SEAT. After the civil war, Hispano-Suiza in Spain was severely affected by the war-devastated economy and the trade embargoes imposed by the allies. In 1946, Hispano-Suiza sold off its Spanish automotive assets to Enasa, a state owned company belonging to the Instituto Nacional de Industria that produced the Pegaso trucks, buses and, for a while, sport cars.
1950s–present
After the Second World War, the French arm of Hispano-Suiza continued primarily as an independent aerospace firm. Between 1945 and 1955, it was building the Rolls-Royce Nene centrifugal compressor turbojet engine under license, designing landing gear in 1950 and Martin-Baker ejection seats in 1955. The company's attention turned increasingly to turbine manufacturing and, in 1968, it was taken over and became a division of SNECMA. In 1999, Hispano-Suiza moved its turbine operations to a new factory in Bezons, outside Paris, using the original factories for power transmissions and accessory systems for jet engines. In 2005, SNECMA merged with SAGEM to form SAFRAN.
In the early 2000s, Hispano-Suiza returned to the automotive world once more, presenting the HS 21 concept car at the 2000 Geneva Motor Show. Designed by Barcelona-based firm Mazel Group Engineering, the mid-engine, two-seater sports car was based on the Renault Sport Spider and was planned to use a BMW or Mercedes-Benz V12 engine. A second model, a luxury sedan named the Hispano-Suiza K8 was presented the following year. Finally, Mazel presented the Hispano-Suiza HS21 GTS in 2002, with the aim of building a car to compete in the 24 hours of Le Mans. The car did not race, and none of the previous concepts entered production.
The brand saw another attempt at a revival in the automotive sector, presenting a new model, the Hispano-Suiza V10 Supercharged, at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show, through a firm affiliated with designer Erwin Leo Himmel. Designed by Oliver Boulay, the concept car was based on the Audi R8 5.2 and featured a V10 engine tuned by Motoren Technik Mayer (MTM). It was expected to be priced at around EUR700,000; however, the planned production never materialised.
The official revival of the Hispano-Suiza brand occurred at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show with the debut of the Carmen, an all-electric supercar. This car was presented by the company Hispano Suiza Cars that is associated with the Peralada Group owned by the Suqué Mateu family, descendants of one of Hispano-Suiza's original founders, Damián Mateu. The car's design was influenced by the 1938 Hispano-Suiza H6B Dubonnet Xenia.
Corporate Leadership
Chief Executive Officers
Sergio Martínez Campos (2019–present)
Presidents/Chairmen
Damián Mateu Bisa (1904–1935)
Miguel Mateu Pla (1935–1946)
Miguel Suqué Mateu (2018–present)
Cars
The models H6B (1919–29), H6C (1924–29), I6 (1924), Hispano-Suiza Junior or HS26 (1931–32), J12 (1931–38) and K6 (1934–37) were made by the French division, the rest were manufactured in Spain.
Aircraft
Hispano Barrón, 1919
Hispano-Suiza E-30, 1930
Hispano-Suiza E-34, 1935