Gallery : Rootes dealers and factories
June 26, 2012
· 
Keith Adams · 
14 Comments
Keith Adams
Thanks to Shahin of the PaykanHunter website (and regular of Autoshite), who put in some serious hours scanning a selection of amazing transparencies, we now have further insight into how the Rootes Group dealerships in the UK looked – and what you were faced with as a potential Hillman or Chrysler customer. This selection of images is absolutely fantastic, and as well as showing the buildings and stock in your typical dealership, they also reveal some truly delicious street scenes of an increasingly distant period of time.
Enjoy the images – and stay tuned for more!
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14 Responses
Wow. By the man a pint.
Utterly amazing, I’m so glad pictures like that are around.
Stunning quality – could almost have been taken yesterday.
Is there anywhere we can find out where these pics were taken? I know a couple of the locations are named on their signage but a caption for each would be helpful
Wow! Fascinating pics – what stands out is how modern some of the dealerships looked, and how uniform the corporate branding was (ironic considering they couldn’t make up their minds how to brand some of the cars) – good stuff!
Amazing photographs,take you way back!
Stunning images, I’m so glad they exist. I remember the turqoise blue dealership livery in the early 1970s. Great to see cars featured such as the Hunter, Avenger and Sceptre.
My late Uncle owned a 1972 Sceptre. He kept it till the mid 1990s and sold it to an enthusiast… for all I know it may still be around now.
This, and the Telly Savalas Birmingham vid really make the 1970′s seem so bleak, and so much like a foreign country. Although at the time things seems so much more modern, colourful and brightly lit.
Canterbury Motors – My Uncle owned the garage tucked away behind that place, Hewitts. It was primarily a haulage firm but in the 60′s (I think) they opened up the motor workshop and body repairs centre.
Nice nostalgic shots there.
I’ll have that Bedford CA at Normand Garage for £5 or 695
Baragain!
Our local Rootes dealer was Red garages at Caernarfon. Now a supermaket
I much prefer car dealerships back then. They had so much character when compared to the identikit glass and steel mini aircraft hangers that car dealers seem to prefer today.
Thornton Engineering in Bradford – that brings back memories of a few visits with my dad every two years in the 1970s. But the Imp-based Husky and a few Avengers were always the second choice, not quite being tempting enough. In reality the solid stone building wasn’t as grim as the photo suggests, although Parkinson’s Ford outlet across the road was much brighter and more modern.
Thornton’s building was on a typical Yorkshire hill, with workshops on the floor below, accessed by an unsurfaced – not even cobbled – road. Access and parking could be a challenge when Fourth Division Bradford City were playing at Valley Parade nearby. Before the tragic 1985 fire, of course.
My dad knew one of the salesmen who, sensing boredom whilst the two of them chatted, and my interest in cars, allowed me as an eight-year-old to wander around the workshops downstairs.
@Chris Baglin. The 70s where bleak alright, a bit like now but without the Internet or mobile phones. Unlike now though, the sun did shine during the summer.
We recently lost a real old school car dealership in the small village of Woolpit, due to VAG insisting that to keep franchises, dealers must invest up to a million quid per showroom. It had already fallen into the hands of a motor group chain & now likes derelict already, as they moved to a town about 10 miles away. Must get up there & take some shots.
Good to see Barlby Road again. In the late 70s I had a Series V Sunbeam Rapier. I was told that they had all been shipped down from Ryton to have their rear screens fitted there.
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