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Spencer Wilks
Spencer Bernau Wilks (26 May 189110 March 1971) was a British manager and administrator in the motor manufacturing industry. He served variously in positions including Managing Director, Chairman, and President of the Rover Company from 1929 until the 1960s. Previously he worked for the Hillman Motor Car Company in Coventry. His younger brother Maurice Wilks also worked at Rover as Chief Engineer, Technical Director and Managing Director from 1930. He is one of Land Rover's founders along with Maurice. Early life and education Wilks was born in Rickmansworth to Thomas Wilks (born Balham), a Director of Leather Co and his wife Jane Eliza (born St. Sepulchre, London), a Suffragette. He had one sister and four brothers including Maurice.''The Times'' - Saturday, 10 June 1967. Career Wilks was initially trained as a solicitor, but his wife Kathleen Edith was a daughter of William Hillman, founder of the Hillman Motor Car Company, and so he became a joint manager in 1921 on the ...
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Spencer Wilks
Spencer Bernau Wilks (26 May 189110 March 1971) was a British manager and administrator in the motor manufacturing industry. He served variously in positions including Managing Director, Chairman, and President of the Rover Company from 1929 until the 1960s. Previously he worked for the Hillman Motor Car Company in Coventry. His younger brother Maurice Wilks also worked at Rover as Chief Engineer, Technical Director and Managing Director from 1930. He is one of Land Rover's founders along with Maurice. Early life and education Wilks was born in Rickmansworth to Thomas Wilks (born Balham), a Director of Leather Co and his wife Jane Eliza (born St. Sepulchre, London), a Suffragette. He had one sister and four brothers including Maurice.''The Times'' - Saturday, 10 June 1967. Career Wilks was initially trained as a solicitor, but his wife Kathleen Edith was a daughter of William Hillman, founder of the Hillman Motor Car Company, and so he became a joint manager in 1921 on the ...
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Maurice Wilks
Maurice Fernand Cary Wilks (19 August 19048 September 1963) was a British automotive and aeronautical engineer, and by the time of his death in 1963, was the chairman of the Rover Company, a British car manufacturer. He was the founder of the Land Rover marque and responsible for the inspiration and concept work that led to the development of the first Land Rover off-road utility vehicle. Early life Wilks was born on 19 August 1904 on Hayling Island, Hampshire, England, the youngest of five sons and one daughter of Thomas Wilks (born Balham), a director of Leather Co and his wife Jane Eliza (born St. Sepulchre, London), a Suffragette. One of his brothers was Spencer Wilks who became managing director, chairman and president of the Rover Car Company.''The Times'' - Saturday, 10 June 1967. He was educated at Malvern College. Career Maurice Wilks worked from 1922 to 1926 for the Hillman Motor Car Company in Coventry. In 1926 he went to work for General Motors in the United S ...
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Rover Company
The Rover Company Limited was a British car manufacturing company that operated from its base in Solihull in Warwickshire. Its lasting reputation for quality and performance was such that its first postwar model reviewed by ''Road & Track'' in 1952 was pronounced finer than any but a Rolls-Royce.". . . and I honestly believe (barring the Rolls-Royce) that there is no finer car built in the world today." Bob Dearborn, Tester Road & Track. Road test no. F-4-52, August 1952. ''The Times'', Thursday, Oct 23, 1952; pg. 5; Issue 52450 Rover also manufactured the Land Rover series from 1948 onwards, which spawned the Range Rover in 1970, and went on to become its most successful and profitable product — with Land Rover eventually becoming a separate company and brand in its own right. Rover was sold to Leyland Motors in 1967, who had already acquired Standard-Triumph seven years earlier. Initially, Rover maintained a level of autonomy within the Leyland conglomerate, but by 19 ...
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Hillman Motor Car Company
Hillman was a British automobile marque created by the Hillman-Coatalen Company, founded in 1907, renamed the Hillman Motor Car Company in 1910. The company was based in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, near Coventry, England. Before 1907 the company had built bicycles. Newly under the control of the Rootes brothers, the Hillman company was acquired by Humber in 1928. Hillman was used as the small car marque of Humber Limited from 1931, but until 1937 Hillman did continue to sell large cars. The Rootes brothers reached a sixty per cent holding of Humber in 1932 which they retained until 1967, when Chrysler bought Rootes and bought out the other forty per cent of shareholders in Humber. The marque continued to be used under Chrysler until 1976. History Origins In 1857 Josiah Turner and James Starley formed the Coventry Sewing Machine Company, and recruited skilled engineers from the London area to join them, one of whom was William Hillman. In 1869 the firm changed its name to the C ...
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Coventry
Coventry ( or ) is a city in the West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its city status until the Middle Ages. The city is governed by Coventry City Council. Formerly part of Warwickshire until 1451, Coventry had a population of 345,328 at the 2021 census, making it the tenth largest city in England and the 12th largest in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest city in the West Midlands region, after Birmingham, from which it is separated by an area of green belt known as the Meriden Gap, and the third largest in the wider Midlands after Birmingham and Leicester. The city is part of a larger conurbation known as the Coventry and Bedworth Urban Area, which in 2021 had a population of 389,603. Coventry is east-south-east of Birmingham, south-west of Leicester, north of Warwick and north-west of London. Coventry is also the most central city in England, ...
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Suffragette
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience. In 1906, a reporter writing in the '' Daily Mail'' coined the term ''suffragette'' for the WSPU, derived from suffragist (any person advocating for voting rights), in order to belittle the women advocating women's suffrage. The militants embraced the new name, even adopting it for use as the title of the newspaper published by the WSPU. Women had won the right to vote in several countries by the end of the 19th century; in 1893, New Zealand became the first self-governing country to grant the vote to all women over the age of 21. When by 1903 women in Britain ha ...
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The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'', which do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1966. In general, the political position of ''The Times'' is considered to be centre-right. ''The Times'' is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, such as '' The Times of India'', ''The New York Times'', and more recently, digital-first publications such as TheTimesBlog.com (Since 2017). In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as , or as , although the newspaper is of nati ...
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William Hillman
William Hillman (13 November 1848 – 4 February 1921) was a British bicycle and automobile manufacturer. In partnership with Louis Coatalen he founded the Hillman-Coatalen Company in 1907, later the Hillman Motor Company after Coatalen's defection to Sunbeam in 1909. Early life Hillman was born on 13 November 1848 in Stratford, Essex (other sources say 30 December 1847 in Lewisham, Kent), where his father, also called William, was a shoemaker; his mother was Sarah Stitchbury. He became an apprentice in the engineering works of John Penn & Co. at Greenwich together with his friend James Starley, who became known as "the father of the cycle industry". Hillman and Starley moved to the expanding industrial area of the English Midlands, where they were employed by the Coventry Sewing Machine Company. Sales of sewing machines had declined, and to compensate the company had become the first British manufacturers of bicycles, using designs based on French " boneshakers". The Franco ...
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Rootes Group
The Rootes Group or Rootes Motors Limited was a British automobile manufacturer and, separately, a major motor distributors and dealers business. Run from London's West End, the manufacturer was based in the Midlands and the distribution and dealers business in the south of England. In the decade beginning 1928 the Rootes brothers, William and Reginald, made prosperous by their very successful distribution and servicing business, were keen to enter manufacturing for closer control of the products they were selling. One brother has been termed the power unit, the other the steering and braking system. With the financial support of Prudential Assurance, the two brothers bought some well-known British motor manufacturers, including Hillman, Humber, Singer, Sunbeam, Talbot, Commer and Karrier, controlling them through their parent, Rootes' 60-per-cent-owned subsidiary, Humber Limited. At its height in 1960, Rootes had manufacturing plants in the Midlands at Coventry and Birmin ...
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Frank Searle (businessman)
Frank Searle CBE, DSO, MIME (1874 – 4 April 1948) was a British transport entrepreneur, a locomotive engineer who moved from steam to omnibuses, the motor industry and airlines. Personal Searle was born in late 1874 at Greenwich, (then in Kent), the son of draper Henry Searle and his wife Elizabeth (née Croaker). Searle appears in the 1881 census of Greenwich living with his parents and siblings at 282 New Cross Road in Deptford, he is described as a six-year-old scholar. 1881 Census of Greenwich, RG11/716, Folio 13, Page 20, Name:Frank Searle, Relation to Head:Son, Condition:Single, Age:6, Occupation:Scholar, Where Born:Deptford, Kent, Address:282 New Cross Road, St Paul Deptford, Greenwich, Kent. In the 1891 census Searle is still at 282 New Cross Road with his siblings and he is described as a 16-year-old steam engine fitters apprentice. 1891 Census of Greenwich, RG12/499, Folio 57, Page 7, Name:Frank Searle, Relation to Head:Brother, Condition:Single, Age:16, Occupati ...
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Land Rover
Land Rover is a British brand of predominantly four-wheel drive, off-road capable vehicles, owned by multinational car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), since 2008 a subsidiary of India's Tata Motors. JLR currently builds Land Rovers in Brazil, China, India, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom. The Land Rover name was created in 1948 by the Rover Company for a utilitarian 4WD off-roader; yet today Land Rover vehicles comprise solely upmarket and luxury sport utility cars. Land Rover was granted a Royal Warrant by King George VI in 1951, and 50 years later, in 2001, it received a Queen's Award for Enterprise for outstanding contribution to international trade. Over time, Land Rover grew into its own brand (and for a while also a company), encompassing a consistently growing range of four-wheel drive, off-road capable models. Starting with the much more upmarket 1970 Range Rover, and subsequent introductions of the mid-range Discovery and entry-level Freelander line ( ...
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Willys Jeep
The Willys MB and the Ford GPW, both formally called the U.S. Army Truck, -ton, 4×4, Command Reconnaissance, commonly known as the Willys Jeep, Jeep, or jeep, and sometimes referred to by its supply catalogue designation G503,According to its United States Army Ordnance Corps Supply Catalog designation, 'G-number', or SNL nr. — a group number for ordering parts, based on a Standard Nomenclature List. were highly successful American off-road capable light military utility vehicles, built in large numbers to a single standardized design, for the United States and the Allied forces in World War II from 1941 until 1945. The jeep became the primary light-wheeled multi-role vehicle of the United States military and its allies, with President Eisenhower once calling it "one of three decisive weapons the U.S. had during WWII." It was the world's first mass-produced light four-wheel drive car. With almost 650,000 units built, the jeep constituted a quarter of the total U.S ...
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