Mulliners

Mulliners
legal form	Limited Company
founding	19th century
resolution	1962
Seat	Birmingham , UK
management	Herbert Mulliner Louis Antweiler
Number of employees	200 (1897)
Branch	Body shop

Mulliners (also: Mulliners of Birmingham ) was a British cartwright that began making carriages in the late 19th century and became a manufacturer of automobile bodies in the first half of the 20th century. Mulliners was a supplier to small and medium-sized automobile manufacturers, which he supplied with standardized superstructures for series models.

Family relationships

At times, four different bodybuilders in the UK used the Mulliner name. There were family ties on the part of the owner or founder; However, business connections did not result from this. All Mulliner operations were formally and organizationally independent.

• Common origins were the Northampton-based Arthur Mulliner (initially: Mulliners of Northampton), which dates back to 1760.
• The coach manufacturer AG Mulliner had also been based in Liverpool since 1854 .
• In 1882 Arthur Mulliner from Northampton and AG Mulliner from Liverpool opened a joint showroom in the affluent London district of Mayfair , which they named Mulliner (London) Ltd. led. This London company was taken over by Henry Jervis Mulliner , which became HJ Mulliner & Co. in 1900 . After a merger with Park Ward, the company finally traded as Mulliner Park Ward from 1961 .
• Independently of this, there had been an independent coachbuilding company in Leamington Spa since the beginning of the 19th century , which was relocated to Birmingham in 1896 and renamed Mulliners and Mulliners of Birmingham. This operation is the subject of this article.

Company history

Beginnings in Leamington Spa

Sunbeam 16 with Weymann body by Mulliners (1930)

Daimler 15 four-window saloon by Mulliners (1935)

Aston Martin DB2

The Mulliners of Birmingham goes back to a carriage manufacturer who started work in the British spa town of Leamington Spa at the beginning of the 19th century. Members of the Mulliner family, who ran a cartwright called Arthur Mulliner in Northampton , were involved in the establishment. The aim was to supply the wealthy customers of what was then a very attractive health resort with high-priced carriages. Both companies worked independently of each other. In 1887 Arthur Felton Mulliner, a son of Henry Mulliner, took over the management of Arthur Mulliner Ltd. in Northampton, while Arthur's brother Herbert Hall Mulliner became director of the Leamington Spa company.

New owners: Cammell Laird and Calthorpe

In the expectation that Leamington Spa would lose a large part of its exclusive clientele in the future, Herbert Mulliner relocated the operation in 1896 to the Bordesley Green district of the city of Birmingham, 50 km away . In 1903 the company was sold to Cammell Laird . Herbert Mulliner remained on the board until 1909; at the same time, he also ran a number of armaments companies.

In the early years, the Mulliners still made carriages. One of the special features of the company was that it offered insurance for accidents with the vehicles. Mulliners' first automobile bodies appeared in 1896. At first, chassis were built by Daimler ; at the beginning of the 20th century, Calthorpe , a manufacturer of smaller automobiles based in Birmingham, was Mulliner's most important client. In 1913, Cammell Laird sold the body manufacturer to Calthorpe. In the following 10 years, Mulliner only manufactured superstructures for the parent company.

Start-up after management buy-out

When Calthorpe became insolvent and went into liquidation in 1924, a management buy-out occurred for individual company components : Louis Antweiler, a Calthorpe director, bought the material and the naming rights and established Mulliners Ltd. New in 1924 at the previous location.

Under Antweiler's leadership, Mulliners concentrated - unlike HJ Mulliner, for example - on standardized series bodies that were delivered to various manufacturers under long-term contracts. They served as supplements to the standard structures offered by the factory. The first client after Mulliners' renewed independence was Clyno , followed by Austin a little later . During this time, Mulliners preferred to manufacture artificial leather -related structures based on the Weymann patent and later so-called semi-Weymanns , in which the body was partly made of synthetic leather and partly of steel. In the Austin program, Mulliners supplemented the factory-made steel body versions supplied by Pressed Steel until 1930 . When the interest in Weymann bodies waned, Austin broke the contract with Mulliners. Instead, Mulliners initially temporarily supplied the Rootes Group ( Hillman Minx , Humber Snipe ) with steel superstructures before it became the preferred body supplier for Daimler and Lanchester from 1932 . Mulliners manufactured the standard bodies of the cheaper models for Daimler, while Arthur Mulliner supplied the bodies of the more expensive variants. From 1937 Mulliners also produced the standard bodies for the Alvis 12/70 .

During the Second World War, the production of civilian bodies came to a standstill. Mulliners instead manufactured military vehicles and aircraft fuselages.

Connection to standard Triumph

After the end of the war, Mulliners began producing coupé and convertible bodies for the Alvis TA 14 . Shortly thereafter, the company received an order from Aston Martin to build the bodies for the DB2 ; a little later the standard bodies for the Daimler Consort and the Daimler Sportsman were added. In the early 1950s, there were finally connections to the high-volume manufacturer Standard Triumph ; Mulliners manufactured, among other things, the station wagon versions of the Standard Vanguard and special bodies for the Triumph Renown . In order to increase capacity, Mulliners took over the supplier Forward Radiator in the 1950s . 1958 Mulliners was bought by Standard Triumph; the plant facilities were integrated into the standard organization. After Standard Triumph was taken over by Leyland in 1960 , the body production at Mulliners ended. The plant was closed in 1961 for reasons of rationalization; 750 of the total of 800 employees were laid off. Leyland used the Mulliners name until 1962 for some body versions that were actually made to order by various body manufacturers in the Midlands.

gallery

• 

  Morris Isis Saloon

• 

  Alvis 12/70 Saloon (1939)

• 

  Armstrong Siddeley (1951)

• 

  Daimler Consort

• 

  Triumph Renown (1954)

• 

  Standard Vanguard Estate (1955)

literature

• Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 . Shebbear 2007 (Herridge & Sons Ltd.) ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 .
• Jonathan Wood: Coachbuilding - The hand-crafted car body Shire Publications Ltd (2008); ISBN 978-0-7478-0688-2
• David Culshaw and Peter Horrobin: The Complete Catalog of British Cars 1895-1975 , Veloce Publishing PLC, Dorchester (1997), ISBN 1-874105-93-6
• Jonathan Wood: The British Motor Industry Shire Publications Ltd (2010); ISBN 0-7478-0768-X , ISBN 978-0-7478-0768-1
• RM Clarke (Editor): Armstrong-Siddeley Gold Portfolio 1945-1960 ; Brooklands Book Distribution Ltd., Cobham, Surrey (UK), ISBN 1-85520-069-4
• Lawrence Dalton: Those Elegant Rolls Royce ; Revised edition (1978), Dalton-Watson Ltd., Publishers, London, England
• Lawrence Dalton: Rolls Royce - The Elegance Continues ; Dalton-Watson Ltd., Publishers, London, England, ISBN 0-901564-05-2

Web links

Commons : Mulliners  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nick Walker: A – Z of British Coachbuilders 1919–1960 . Herridge & Sons, Shebbear 2007, ISBN 978-0-9549981-6-5 , p. 150.
2. ^ Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, David Burgess-Wise: Daimler Century . Patrick Stephens Ltd., 1995, ISBN 1-85260-494-8 , p. 257.