It was founded in 1904 by Marc Birkigt and Damián Mateu [es] as an automobile manufacturer and eventually had several factories in Spain and France that produced luxury cars, aircraft engines, trucks and weapons.

In Paris, Emilio de la Cuadra met the Swiss engineer Marc Birkigt and hired him to work for the company in Spain.

[1] 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.

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.

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.

With the start of World War I, Hispano-Suiza turned to the design and production of aircraft engines under the direction of Marc Birkigt.

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.

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.

[citation needed] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[9] 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).