Rootes

Geoffrey Rootes demonstrating the new Hillman Imp

The British government persuaded the Rootes Company to open a new car factory at Linwood in the early 1960s. The government was trying to encourage the development of new industries in Central Scotland to replace declining traditional industries such as coal mining, shipbuilding and heavy engineering. In this source Lord Rootes says that he already had plans to produce a small car. This model would compete with other small cars such as the Mini and the Ford Anglia. Generous grants from the government persuaded the company to open a factory in Scotland. The site at Linwood had good transport links to the rest of Scotland, but not such good links to England where the rest of the Rootes factories were located.

Rootes car factory 1963

Rootes car factory 1963

Rootes car factory

Geoffrey Rootes' dream for Linwood. Author Robert J Allen. Published 1991.

Quoting Geoffrey Rootes in 1982

"Rootes's decision to expand in the late nineteen-fifties was because of the growing importance of the small car market in the UK …and this was a sector of the market in which we were not represented. We had for many years been working on the design of a vehicle to fill this gap and the Hillman Imp was in an advanced state of design and prototype testing. It was for this reason that we wished to expand our manufacturing capacity which was necessary to fill this gap in our model range."