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Rootes was the parent company of many famous British marques, including Hillman, Humber, Singer , Sunbeam, Commer and Karrier . Originally founded in Kent in 1919 by William Rootes as a car sales company, Rootes grew and eventually took over the five manufacturers which it sold, and became one of the earliest advocates of the policy of " badge engineering". Hillman was intended to be the basic brand, Singer slightly more upmarket, Sunbeam was the sports brand, while Humber made luxury models. Commer was the commercial vehicles division, whilst Karrier specialised in municipal contracts.

Rootes was best known for manufacturing stolid, dependable, well engineered (and largely unexciting) middle-market vehicles. Famous Rootes models include the Hillman Minx, Singer Gazelle, Humber Super Snipe and the Sunbeam Alpine.

In 1963, Rootes introduced the Hillman Imp, a compact rear engined sedan with an innovative all aluminum engine. It was intended to be Rootes' answer to the all-conquering Mini, and endorsed their confidence in the Imp by building a massive new factory in Linwood, near GlasgowFor other uses, see Glasgow (disambiguation Glasgow is Scotland's largest city, located on the River Clyde in West Central Scotland. It is also one of 32 unitary council regions in Scotland, officially known as the City of Glasgow and, like many west of S in which to assemble it. But the Imp was tragically underdesigned, and a whole string of quality and unreliability issues, coupled to buyer apathy towards the quirky design meant that the car never fulfilled its promise.

In the mid- 1960sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Years: 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 Events and trends The 1960s was a turbulent decade of change around, Rootes was taken over by the Chrysler Corporation of America, following huge losses amid the commercial failure of the troubled Imp. Chrysler was also only too keen to take control of the struggling firm as it wished to have its own wholly-independent European subsidiary like arch rivals Ford and GMGM redirects here. This article is about General Motors . For other uses, see GM (disambiguation). General Motors Corporation also known as GM is a United States-based automobile maker with worldwide operations and brands including Buick, Cadillac, Chevro. Chrysler also took over the French SimcaSimca is a now-defunct French automobile manufacturer. The name SIMCA stands for Societe Industrielle de Mecanique et de Carosserie Automobile''. The founder of Simca was Henri Pigozzi who at first manufactured Fiat models in France. The first Simca facto company at the same time, and spent the early 1970sMillennia: 1st millennium 2nd millennium 3rd millennium Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s Years: 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 Events and trends slowly killing off each of Rootes' brands one by one until only Hillman was left.

Under Chrysler stewardship, Rootes soldiered on with a range of worthy but dull rear-wheel drive family saloons like the Hillman AvengerThe Hillman Avenger is a sub-compact car manufactured by the Rootes Group, and latterly Chrysler Europe. It has been produced under various guises and badges over a production run that lasted 20 years. It was initially produced at Rootes' plant in Ryton-o and Hillman Hunter ("Arrow"), while desperately trying to develop the Imp into a decent car. An attempt to take the Avenger to America as the Plymouth Cricket was aborted after only two years, and Chrysler's lack of interest in Rootes' products was further reflected in its development of the Simca-based Chrysler Alpine and Horizon ranges instead, allowing the Hillman brand to die by 1976.

Chrysler spent much of the 1970s unsuccessfully trying to integrate the Rootes and Simca ranges into one, coherent whole. The boxy, rear wheel drive saloons of the British company didn't fit well in marketing terms with Simca's relatively advanced front wheel drive hatchbacks. Build quality suffered, and the UK factories (Ryton and Linwood) were the subject of frequent Government bail-outs. The resulting lacklustre product range, severe financial problems back home in the United States, coupled with a multitude of industrial relations problems in the 1970s led to the collapse of Chrysler Europe in 1977, leading to the company's 1978 takeover by PSA Peugeot-Citroen (for a mere $1), and the only remaining remnant of Rootes is its main assembly plant, in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, which today produces various Peugeot models for European markets.

The Linwood plant closed in 1981, signalling the end of the road for the Avenger, but the production tooling for the Hillman Hunter went to Iran, where the car is still in production today as the Paykan, and is a common sight throughout the Middle East. The Simca-based models continued to be built at both Ryton and Poissy using the resurrected Talbot badge for the first half of the 1980s. The Peugeot 309 was originally to be launched as the Talbot Arizona, and the Talbot Samba was to have been a rebadged Citroën AX. However, PSA saw little reason to maintain its third brand and the new models were not launched with their alternative names. The Talbots were eventually replaced by Peugeot and Citroën models.