Hispano-Suiza — Barcelona's luxury cars and aero engines since 1904

Hispano-Suiza at a glance

La Cuadra, Castro and the founding in 1904

The story begins in 1898, when Captain Emilio de la Cuadra started building electric cars in Barcelona under the La Cuadra name. The firm hired a young Swiss engineer, Marc Birkigt. Born in Geneva on 8 March 1878, Birkigt had trained at the Geneva Mechanical School and arrived in Barcelona in 1899. In 1900 La Cuadra built its first petrol cars to a Birkigt design, but only two complete vehicles were finished.

In 1902 José María Castro Fernández took over and renamed the business Fábrica Hispano-Suiza de Automóviles. It went bankrupt in December 1903. A restructuring on 14 June 1904 created La Hispano-Suiza Fábrica de Automóviles, with Birkigt, Damián Mateu and Francisco Seix named as founders.

The Alfonso XIII sports model, named after the Spanish king, appears in the model list for 1912. In 1911 the company opened an assembly plant, Hispano France, at Levallois-Perret near Paris. In 1914 the works in France moved to larger premises at Bois-Colombes.

War work: the Hispano-Suiza V8 aero engine

When the First World War began in 1914, the branch in France turned to aero engines under Birkigt. His Hispano-Suiza 8 was a 90-degree V8 with cast aluminium cylinder blocks, a new idea at the time. According to the company article, Hispano engines powered more than half of the Allied fighters, among them the SPAD VII and SPAD XIII. Later aero engines of the 12X and 12Y families were derived from the V8, and Birkigt also designed the HS.404 20 mm cannon, the main fighter gun of the RAF from 1941.

The H6 and the golden 1920s

The H6 was introduced at the 1919 Paris Motor Show. It had an all-aluminium 6,597 cc straight-six with an overhead camshaft, rated at 99 kW (135 PS) in the company's model table. It also had power-assisted brakes on all four wheels. That system was later licensed to other makers, including Hispano's great rival Rolls-Royce. Birkigt was nominated for the "Car Engineer of the Century" prize for this car.

The range grew in the 1920s:

In 1922 Hispano built five short-wheelbase H6B racers, named "Boulogne" after the H6's triple win in the 1923 Boulogne sports car race. André Dubonnet entered an H6C Boulogne in the 1924 Targa Florio with a body by Nieuport-Astra made of thin wooden strips. The Czech firm Škoda built the H6 under licence, rated at 75 kW (100 hp). Roughly 2,350 H6, H6B and H6C cars were built from 1919 to 1933, a figure the H6 article marks as unconfirmed.

In 1923 the branch in France became Société Française Hispano-Suiza, with the Spanish parent holding 71 per cent of the shares. Its last great car was the J12 of 1931, with a 9.4-litre V12 of 162 kW (220 PS). One was ordered in 1935 as the ceremonial car of the President of the Spanish Republic.

Civil war, nationalisation and the end of car production

The 1930s ended the car business on both sides of the Pyrenees. When the Spanish Civil War began in 1936, the government of Catalonia collectivised the Spanish factories. In 1937 the French government took 51 per cent of the subsidiary in France, and in 1938 the French company stopped making cars to concentrate on aero engines.

In 1940 Hispano-Suiza, Banco Urquijo and other Spanish companies founded S.I.A.T., the project that led to SEAT. In 1946 Hispano-Suiza sold its Spanish car assets to ENASA, the state-owned maker of Pegaso trucks and cars. The business in France continued in aviation. SNECMA took it over in 1968, and SNECMA merged with SAGEM in 2005 to form Safran.

Birkigt, the engineer behind every great Hispano, died in Versoix, Switzerland, on 15 March 1953.

The Carmen: an electric revival

In 2019 the name returned at the Geneva Motor Show. The new company, Hispano Suiza Cars, is linked to the Peralada Group, owned by the Suqué Mateu family. Its first car, the Carmen, is an all-electric two-door coupé named in tribute to Carmen Mateu.

The Carmen Boulogne followed in 2021 and shares its name with the Boulogne racers of the 1920s. With 19 Carmens and five planned Boulognes, the revived company builds in very small numbers.

The Hispano-Suiza models listed on 1cars are in the Hispano-Suiza catalogue, and the most famous car has its own page on the Hispano-Suiza H6, from Boulogne to the Xenia. The rival that licensed its brakes is covered in the history of Rolls-Royce, and the Spanish car company that grew from S.I.A.T. in the history of SEAT. More cars of the period are in the classic cars section.

Hispano-Suiza timeline

Landmark Hispano-Suiza models

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