Hispano-Suiza was a Spanish luxury automotive and engineering firm, best known for their cars, engines (including world famous aviation engines) and weapons designs in the pre-World War II period. In 1923 the French subsidiary became an autonomous partnership though not totally independent from the parent company, Today they are part of the French SAFRAN Group, while the Spanish company sold all their automotive assets to Enasa, the maker of Pegaso trucks and sport cars, in 1946.
Early years
In 1898 a Spanish artillery captain, Emilio de la Cuadra, started electric automobile production in Barcelona under the name of La Cuadra. In Paris, De la Cuadra met the talented Swiss engineer Marc Birkigt (lived 1878–1953) and hired him to work for the company in Spain. La Cuadra built their first gas-powered engines from Birkigt designs. At some point in 1902, the ownership changed hands to J. Castro and became Fábrica Hispano-Suiza de Automóviles (Spanish-Swiss Car Factory) but this company went bankrupt in December 1903.
Yet another restructuring took place in 1904, creating La Hispano-Suiza Fábrica de Automóviles also under Castro' s direction. Four new engines were introduced in the next year and a half. 3.8 litre and 7.4 litre four-cylinder and a pair of big six-cylinder engines were produced. This company managed to avoid bankruptcy and in Spain remained in operation, as a car, truck and aviation engine producer, with its main plant located in Barcelona, until 1946. They mass-produced cars, trucks and buses and a number of hand-built racing and luxury cars, some owned by King Alfonso XIII of Spain.
By this time in the early twentieth France was proving to be a much larger market for their luxury cars than Spain. In 1911 a new factory, known as Hispano France, was set up in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret. In 1914, they moved to larger factories at Bois-Colombes and took the name Hispano-Suiza.
