THE SUPER MINX FAMILY
One the face of it, the Rootes Group’s midrange model offering in the first half of the 1960s seemed a bit odd. There were two model lines – the Hillman Minx and its Singer Gazelle and Sunbeam Rapier equivalents, and then there was the slightly larger Super Minx family – Hillman, slightly upmarket Singer Vogue and an even plusher Humber Sceptre. The Super Minxes were bigger, but not by that much and both ranges shared the same power units and running gear.
If you are thinking that this all sounds a bit strange, then that’s because it is! Especially when you consider that the whole Rootes business had grown out of a highly effective sales and marketing operation, and effective sales and marketing was part of the Rootes DNA. To understand why this apparently muddled product line happened, we need to start with a brief look at the history of the business.
Brothers William (Billy) and Reginald Rootes were an ideal partnership. Billy was the salesman and ideas man – ‘the engine’ of the business as he put it. Reggie, on the other hand, was the administrator and financial brains who made Billy’s ideas happen, and happen profitably – he was ‘the steering and brakes.’
Billy joined Singer Motors in 1909 aged 15, as a penny-an-hour apprentice. After WW1 he subsequently persuaded Reggie, who had just passed the civil service entrance exam, to instead join him in a car sales business in Maidstone. Each brother invested a £1200 startup gift from their father, and Rootes
