Hewland currently employ 130 people at their Maidenhead facility and have diversified into a variety of markets being particularly successful in electric vehicle transmission supply.

In 1959, Bob Gibson-Jarvie, the Chief Mechanic of UDT Laystall racing team running Cooper F2 cars, sought help from Hewland as gearbox troubles were experienced.

[1] The first transaxle product, the Hewland Mk.I of 1960, was a minor modification of the Volkswagen Beetle 4 speed transaxle used upside-down with custom made differential housing side plates for the midship engine Lola Mk.III (John Young tuned Ford 105E 997cc pushrod) built for the new Formula Junior rules (1 litre engine with minimum weight 360 kg, or 1.1 litre with minimum 400 kg) in 1961.

Hewland Mk.III of 1962 became the first product for the public, which used the magnesium alloy case of the Beetle transaxle to house 5 pairs of bespoke straight-cut constant mesh spur gears with dog rings operated by custom-made brass shift forks.

Gear selector shaft was located in the nose housing, unmodified as in the Beetle set up, facing rear-ward at the tail end of the box in the front-side-back position on a midship engine racing cars.

Mk.VI of 1965 was an improved version of Mk.IV, which established Hewland as the dominant volume production transaxle manufacturer in the small displacement midship-engine racing car market, helped by the de facto standard usage in the newly born Formula Ford series.

In addition to the traditional manual transmission products covering almost all the racing and rallying classes, Hewland now offers complete semi-automatic transmission system components, including shift actuators, throttle actuators, compressors, shift position sensors and steering wheel paddle-shift systems.