H. J. Mulliner & Co.

H. J. Mulliner & Co. is a well-known British coachbuilder who traces their history to 1760, building coaches for the Royal Mail in Northampton. Mulliner now is the personal commissioning department for Bentley.

There were at one time four separate companies trading with the name Mulliner, all seem to have descended from the original family: Arthur Mulliner based in Northampton; Mulliner based in Liverpool who also opened a showroom in Brook Street, Mayfair, London; H.J. Mulliner who bought the Mayfair showroom; and Mulliners of Birmingham.

Mulliners of Northampton and A.G. Mulliner of Liverpool joined, founding Mulliner London Ltd. They were taken over by Henry Jervis Mulliner. He founded H.J. Mulliner & Co. in the Mayfair area of London were the factory was set up. The location was convenient as his clients, the nobility could afford his services.

Rolls-Royce acquired Mulliner and Park Ward and merged them into Mulliner Park Ward in 1961.

Arthur Mulliner

Arthur H Mulliner was the son of F Mulliner who set up the original Mulliner company making mail coaches in Northampton. Arthur H's son Arthur Felton Mulliner (born 1859) took the company into the construction of motor car bodies and by 1900 they had built over 150 mainly on Daimler cars. In 1907, as well as the Northampton works, a new sales office and factory was opened in Long Acre, London. Business boomed during the 1920s with orders for bodies on Armstrong Siddeley and Vauxhall cars being exhibited at the 1920 London Motor Show.

In the 1930s although orders for the more traditional makers such as Rolls-Royce and Bentley continued, large production runs from the middle market makers were proving harder to get and in 1939 the company was sold to the car distributor Henlys who closed the coachbuilding business but kept the sales and marketing operation which lasted until 1976.

Mulliners(Birmingham)

This company seems to have originated around 1896 and built a few bodies for Daimler before deciding the future lay in making large production runs for motor companies that did not have their own facilities. An early contract was gained from Calthorpe, then a booming company, leading to probably the entire output going to them and eventual close financial and corporate links between the two.

After Calthorpe failed in 1924, the managing director of Mulliners, Louis Antweiler, arranged to buy the coachbuilding company which was then renamed Mulliners Ltd. He obtained contracts with Clyno and Austin for who he made many Weymann style fabric bodies for the Austin 7. When the fashion for fabric bodies declined the business with Austin went but was replaced by orders from Hillman, Humber, Standard and Lanchester.

In 1929 the company went public. The main business was now with Daimler and Lanchester wherre they made the bodies for the cheaper range of cars with confusingly, Arthur Mulliner of Northampton making the up-market models. Alvis was added to the list of customers.

During World War 2 they made bodies for military vehicles and troop carrying gliders.

After the war body making for cars resumed with Aston Martin, Armstrong Siddeley and Triumph joining the list of customers. Standard-Triumph had by then a shortage of body making capacity and this led them to buy the company in 1958. The name disappeared in 1962.

References

A-Z of British Coachbuilders. Nick Walker. Bay View Books 1997. ISBN 1-870979-93-1