Hispano-Suiza models

Hispano-Suiza is a Spanish company founded in Barcelona in 1904 by the businessman Damián Mateu and the Swiss engineer Marc Birkigt. It began as a car maker, and its Alfonso XIII of 1912 was named after the King of Spain.

A French branch began assembly in Levallois-Perret in 1911 and moved to Bois-Colombes in 1914; it built the largest luxury models and was incorporated as a separate company in 1923. During the First World War Birkigt designed the Hispano-Suiza 8, a V8 aero engine with a cast aluminium block used widely by French and British air forces. The Hispano-Suiza H6 of 1919, with an overhead-camshaft six-cylinder engine, and the twelve-cylinder J12 of 1931–1938 were its most important luxury cars. The French arm stopped making cars in 1938, and the Spanish car business was sold to Enasa in 1946. In 2019 the brand returned with the electric Carmen hypercar, backed by descendants of Damián Mateu.