CarBrandLogos archive · Hispano-Suiza · 1919

Hispano-SuizaH6

Aero-engine thinking on the road, with brakes Rolls-Royce paid to copy.

The story

A defining chapter in Hispano-Suiza history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Hispano-Suiza H6, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Marc Birkigt spent the First World War designing V8 aero engines that powered Allied fighters, and when he turned back to cars he brought the discipline with him. The H6, shown at the 1919 Paris Salon, used a 6,597 cc overhead-camshaft straight-six built like an aircraft unit: an aluminium block with screwed-in steel liners, a seven-bearing crankshaft machined from solid, and a dual-ignition system. It was smoother and more reliable than almost anything else a wealthy buyer could order, and it made the pre-war generation of luxury cars look agricultural overnight.

HS 1924 Tulipwood sx · Bill Abbott · CC BY-SA 2.0

Hispano-Suiza at Denver transport museum 057

Design and engineering

The more consequential innovation was underneath. The H6 had four-wheel brakes at a time when many expensive cars still stopped only at the rear, and Birkigt drove them through a mechanical servo taken off the gearbox, which multiplied pedal effort without demanding a strong leg. Rolls-Royce, unable to match it, licensed the design and fitted versions of the same gearbox-driven servo to its cars for the next four decades.

Hispano-Suiza at Denver transport museum 057 · myself (User:Piotrus) · CC BY-SA 3.0

In production

Competition confirmed the engineering. The larger 7,983 cc H6C, known as the Boulogne after the races it won, was fast enough that André Dubonnet had one bodied in tulipwood strips over a light frame for the 1924 Targa Florio, producing one of the most photographed bodies of the era. Cars were sold as chassis and dressed by the great French coachbuilders, wearing Georges Guynemer's flying stork on the radiator, an emblem borrowed from the escadrille that had used Hispano-Suiza engines.

Hispano-Suiza H6 B , Coimbatore, India · SnapMeUp · CC BY-SA 4.0

Legacy

Production ran until 1933, split between the Bois-Colombes factory outside Paris and licensed manufacture elsewhere, before the V12-engined J12 took over at the top of the range. The H6 remains the car that established Hispano-Suiza as the technical equal of anything from Britain or Germany, rather than a Spanish curiosity.

At a glance