The Hispano-Suiza H6 is one of the most famous models produced by the company. It was introduced at the 1919 Paris Motor Show. Approximately 2,350 H6, H6B, and H6C cars were produced until 1933.
The name Hispano-Suiza (indicating Spanish and Swiss origins) derives from the meeting of two men: in 1898, a Spanish artillery captain, Emilio de la Cuadra Albiol started electric car production in Barcelona under the name of La Cuadra. In Paris, he met the Swiss engineer Marc Birkigt and hired him to work for the company in Spain. The result was the manufacture of luxury cars with a sporting character. By 1910 it became clear that France was a larger market for Hispano-Suiza’s luxury cars than Spain and in 1911 an assembly factory called Hispano France began operating in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret. Production was moved in 1914 to larger factories at Bois-Colombes, a northwestern suburb of Paris, under the name Hispano-Suiza, and soon became Hispano-Suiza’s main plant for producing the largest, most costly models.
The straight-six H6 engine owed its overall design to the remarkably successful V8 aero engines designed by Birkigt for the First World War. It inherited the aero engine’s use of an engine block cast in a single piece of aluminium and a single overhead camshaft. The seven-bearing crankshaft of the 6,597cc engine was milled from a 600 lb steel billet to become a 35 lb unit. The block used screwed-in steel liners and the water passages were enamelled to prevent corrosion.
The H6 brakes were of particular note. They had light-alloy drums on all four wheels with power assistance provided by a drum-type servo driven from the transmission. This technology was later licensed to other manufacturers, including Rolls-Royce – although that system used a disc clutch system and also worked in reverse, which the Hispano-Suiza system did not.
The H6B, introduced in 1922, was slightly more powerful. The 1922 chassis seen here was rebodied in 1934 with this handsome two-door saloon body by Vanden Plas. The car survives in the UK and was shown at the 1993 Louis Vuitton concours. Its original coachwork is unknown.
The H6 may have been a luxury car but it also had an honourable competition history. A series of five racing H6Bs with short wheelbases and slightly enlarged engines was built in 1922. These were later referred to as “Boulogne”, to celebrate the H6’s triple victory at the sports car race at Boulogne by drivers Dubonnet, Garnier, and Boyriven in 1923. Woolf Barnato achieved eight international records in a Boulogne, including a 92 mph average over 300 miles at Brooklands in 1924. André Dubonnet entered an H6C Boulogne, powered by an even larger 7,982 cc engine, in the 1924 Targa Florio.
Image displayed with the kind permission of the Haynes Motor Museum.
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