My earliest memory of Rootes was the annual visit to the pantomime at the Coventry Hippodrome with the other kids of Rootes workers. We all got a Christmas stocking of chocolates as a present. A fond memory and I was about five at the time, so it must have made an impression on me. We also went on a trip every summer, sometimes to Drayton Manor and others to Wicksteed Park. It is amazing that I still recall these trips organised for the kids by the Group, but I had fun and I really appreciate the efforts the adults made for us.
A Commer test run
Another more exciting memory was that of my father taking a Commer Van on a test run. My father was a planning engineer and we regularly had roll cars or new models to “test” with trips to the seaside etc. The most exciting of these being the trip with the Commer Van to the Malvern Hills to test – this time really test – the brake system.
A major fail as it happens. Dad, Mum and Gran (sitting over the engine in the middle) and three kids in the back (playing on the sand bags provided as ballast for the test) set out on a Sunday for a test run in the country. What we didn’t know is that the fitter who fitted the trial system had failed to tighten the joints. Every brake manoeuvre resulted in a few drops of fluid being forced out. Coming down a steep hill into a village, my father pressed the brake to slow our descent which forced the remaining fluid out. From then on we were in mega trouble and had no brakes at all.
My father tried to stop the Commer by rolling against a house wall, taking out a part of an entrance to a butcher’s shop and trapping two old ladies in the doorway, scaring the life out of them. That didn’t work and so we tried to use the brand new lamp posts in front of us as potential “brakes”. Three lamp posts later, and just before a petrol pump, we came to a stop.
The vicar was livid!
The local vicar (whose house was opposite us) was livid, as was his son. The lamp posts were one week old at the time and the product of years of lobbying. As kids, we got to see Sooty and Sweep accompanied by ice cream in the vicar’s house, which we thought was a great end to an exciting day. Today there would have been a major inquest, but my father’s boss sent a secretary in a company car to bring us home – on a Sunday.
Years later my dad got me a used roll car for a super price. A Talbot Horizon. My first nearly new car. So, as a Rootes kid, I can’t complain about how they treated me and the rest of us.
My father goes back a long way with Rootes, having started at Humber and later having worked on the Imp design team.
Comments
The Rootes Ryton on Dunsmore factory was a Government No 2 Factory built to produce among other things Bristol Hercules Engines in WW2,. These engines were primarily for Halifax bombers but also found their way into at least 24 other types of wartime aircraft including Lancaster and Stirling bombers.
I remember the selection boxes. One year the committee gave them out at the beginning before the pantomime of course kids being kids we ate everything during the show and left all the rubbish behind, next year we got them after the show.
Remember it vaguely myself but Dad moved to Rootes Birmingham, but Dad and Mum both used to work at Ryton in the 50s
The factory was built to manufacture and test aero engines for the planes needed for the Second World War. One building was always called the Test House.
I know a man who was born in Bubbenhall and worked at Rootes He travelled to work on his push bike. At the big home time exodus one night he knocked a young lady down with it who had come to work there from up north. He married her from this incident. Sadly he passed away a few years ago.
“In 1940, under the Government’s shadow factory scheme, Rootes built its massive assembly plant in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, near Coventry, initially manufacturing aircraft, one of the first types being the Bristol Blenheim. Production included another of the RAF’s heavy bombers, the Handley Page Halifax. Following the war, the plant was the main focus of the company’s passenger car operations. ” Ref http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Rootes_Group
In the early 1960s as a young fella I drove for an Oxford Haulage company, Hardings. Monday to Friday I picked up 8 car body shells from Pressed Steel in Oxford, and took them to a company called Thrupp and Maberly in Cricklewood, London, T & M were coach builders (notable coach builders to Queen Victoria). I would drop off the shells and pick up eight fully trimmed shells before taking them up to the Ryton factory to have the engines and transmission installed. These were Humber Imperials, which were the top end cars of the range, and those trimmed by T & M were the most prestigious.
The main story -‘An eventful test drive’ is a very interesting story well told. With hindsight the incident should never have happened of course. For several reasons.
1. The tightening of the brake pipe unions should have been double checked and recorded on a check list.
2. The carrying of people (especially children) other than authorised company or supplier employees should not have been allowed. Were they covered by insurance?
3. I would not be surprised that even in those less ‘health and safety’ aware days to learn that the driver/employee was not breaking clearly laid out rules that were to be found somewhere in the company’s rule book.
But Brits being Brits, we are all likely to bend the rules from time to time. We are adventurers at heart. I know that I can relate to this story. Having said that I do wonder if this cavalier attitude, among both management and workers, led to the failure of companies like Rootes and BL etc.
Thirty two years with Chrysler Peugeot now retired.
My father, Joseph Kaisermann, worked at Rootes, aero- engines (Bristol Hercules),during WWII at Ryton on Dunsmore. He was the Assistant Chief, Chemist, and devised an open-valve aero-engine which Rootes had no money to patent during the war, so this invention was taken to the States. My father in 1949 (Perkins) also founded Sandvik Swedish Steel, in the U.K. He, like many other people, never had the recognition for his hard work and dedication, and royalty to these companies that he should have had.
My mum Shirley Britton was a telephonist at Rootes and left when she was pregnant in 1957. She remembers Norman Garrard the competitions manager who along with his wife attended her wedding.
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