Retrospective: Automobiles and aeroplanes: Hispano-Suiza

A second factory was built near Paris at Bois-Colombes, and this was the facility enlisted to build engines for France's World War I planes. Birkigt developed these lightweight V12 units, designing cast aluminium blocks with steel liners and overhead camshafts, reduction gearing and even a hollow propeller shaft, allowing a gun to be fired through the propeller spinner - revolutionary stuff for 1914. More than 50,000 H-S engines were supplied to the French SPAD VII - the so-called La Cicogne, or Stork, squadron - as well as for aircraft by Hanriot, RAF (for the BE12 and SE5) and Sopwith (Triplane) during the war.

Hispano-Suiza's heyday was between the wars; it adopted the Cicogne stork emblem as its bonnet mascot, and built ultra-luxury cars including the H6B 32CV (1919), also built under licence by Skoda in Bohemia. The Paris-built H6-series models were among Europe's most expensive cars, and were often referred to as the French Rolls-Royces; whilst H-S supplied the rolling chassis, each one was finished with custom bodywork from a specialist coachbuilder. But by the 1930s, when economic depression hit, Hispano-Suiza, now a separate company from its Spanish parent, ran out of buyers for its 9.5-litre/11.3-litre V12 Type 68.

Luckily, the firm had a solid business selling aircraft engines: in 1919 it launched its new eight-cylinder aircraft engine, which proved to be a huge success, and by the end of the 1930s it had supplied aero engines to companies including Breguet, Dewoitine, Farman, flying boat-maker Latecoere, Morane-Saulnier, Potez and Vickers. In 1933, H-S engines set 14 international speed and endurance records, and more were supplied for French World War II fighter planes, though the firm could never quite meet demand for its 12Y unit. Made in greater numbers were the HS9 and HS404 autocannons, fitted in most British RAF planes.

Post-war, with much of the Bois-Colombes plant destroyed, Hispano-Suiza turned to building the Rolls-Royce Nene and Tay engines under licence; it went on to develop an engine based on the Tay, the Verdon, which was used in the Dassault Mystere IVA (1952), an acclaimed fighter-bomber. Yet it moved further into component and systems supply, rather than complete engines, making items such as ejector seats, turboprops, brakes and transmissions, as well as gas turbines, turbochargers and robots for non-aeronautical applications; it also developed landing gear for the 1950s Caravelle jet and, later, Concorde, aided by its 1963 takeover of Bugatti and its activities at its Molsheim plant. Hispano-Bugatti was absorbed into the SNECMA conglomerate in 1968, and its landing gear/hydraulics division merged with Messier in 1977; both Hispano-Suiza and Messier-Bugatti are now part of the SAFRAN Group, and Hispano-Suiza is currently one of the world's leading suppliers of transmissions and ECUs for large airliners, as well as making engine control systems for the A400M military craft and thrust reversers for the Airbus A380 jumbo-jet. The rights to use this historic brand name for car-building, meanwhile, have been sold to the Barcelona-based Mazel Group, a consultancy specialising in design and development of prototypes, motorsport engines, motorsport team support and low-volume specialist vehicle production. Mazel has presented the K8 and HS21 concepts at motor shows, though is yet to bring a new-age Hispano-Suiza to production.

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