Humber Limited was a British manufacturer of bicycles, motorcycles, and cars, incorporated and listed on the stock exchange in 1887.

Building a brand new car, the Hillman Imp, proved beyond Humber and Rootes Group resources and their businesses were bought by the Chrysler Corporation in 1967.

The directors expressed the greatest interest in the new industry of motor carriages and cycles for which extensive works were to be erected by the monopoly at Levallois Perret.

At the time of the flotation prospective investors were told that agencies were already established in all principal towns in France, and the cities: St Petersburg, Copenhagen, Milan, Athens, Brussels, Bucharest, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Buenos Ayres, Santiago, Constantinople, Algiers, Sfax, Tunis, Alexandria, Saigon, Hong Kong, Port Said and throughout the whole of South America.

A severe economic recession in 1899 then brought about a financial reconstruction and the incorporation of a new company, Humber Limited, to continue the existing business.

[9] At Humber & Company's next general meeting in 1897 the managing director said they had received many letters asking if they would produce a motorised vehicle, and that they had in fact been working on this project for two years, but had delayed production until they found a suitably reliable engine.

[10] The first Humber car was produced in 1898 and was a three-wheeled tricar of the 'sociable' type powered by a single cylinder Turrell engine.

[12][page needed] There were postwar slumps in the early 1920s and in addition the public were moving from pedal cycles to motorcycles as well as to cars.

Humber cars, the product being as the chairman put it of a distinctive class, were more influenced by conditions than were mass-produced vehicles.

[16] The chairman, Stanley Brotherhood, told a special meeting of shareholders of the exceedingly good performance of one of the 14-40 cars driven by J W Fitzwilliam and his brother who had just returned from traversing 4,500 miles in central Europe including the worst roads in the Balkans.

Hillman, the chairman explained, made one of the most popular medium priced cars and would provide a suitable partner to the distinctive Humber products.

engine and superbly finished coachwork, the new cars were pure Rootes with Bendix brakes, downdraught carburettors, "silent third" gearboxes with central gear lever and hydraulic shock absorbers.

A Humber Twelve was introduced that looked like a Hillman Minx with a painted spare wheel cover and hinged quarter lights.

[20] Humber's independence ended in 1931 when the Rootes brothers bought a majority shareholding with the financial support of Prudential Assurance.

[21] There was a resurgence in domestic and export demand for pedal bicycles and in February 1932 Raleigh acquired all the Humber cycles trade marks.

Armoured cars, scout cars and staff cars were made in the existing factories along with much other war material [24] General Montgomery, Commander of the British and Allied forces in Northern Africa during the Desert war of World War II, had two specially built Humber Super Snipe four door open tourers made with larger front wings or guards, mine proof floors, special fittings and long range fuel tanks.

Both cars still exist in museums in England and are a testament to the high engineering and manufacturing standards of Humber and Rootes Ltd.

In the postwar era, Humber's mainstay products included the four-cylinder Hawk and six-cylinder Super Snipe.

In 1960 Rootes was the world's twelfth largest motor corporation by volume, its annual output nearly 200,000 cars, vans and trucks.

Imp and Chrysler The success of BMC's Mini made Rootes speed the development of their own small car.

Jaguar solved their expansion problem by buying Daimler and its Coventry plant with experienced workforce but Rootes selected a greenfield site by Pressed Steel body works near Glasgow airport in Scotland, at Linwood near Paisley.

[24] The last of the traditional large Humbers, the series VA Super Snipe (fitted with twin Stromberg CD 100 Carburettors) were sold in 1968, when Chrysler ended production.

The trucks were later marketed as Leyland ‘Redline’[28][29] The unused company name of Humber, continued to be still maintained and registered by the new owner Peugeot.

They preferred the idea of a huge “Sales Mall” development on the site in Bathgate, rather than support an initiative that would have involved continued manufacturing employment in the area.

Regrettably, all the Bathgate factory buildings were eventually flattened, and the site was ironically, subsequently, used merely as a distribution centre for a number of other automotive manufacturers.

In 1909 the company signed a contract to build 40 copies of the Blériot XI monoplane, powered by their own three-cylinder engine,[35] and four aircraft were exhibited at the Aero Show at Olympia in 1910.