Hillman "Sixteen", "Hawk" and "80"

This is the catalogue record of the Hillman "Sixteen", "Hawk" and "80", one of 23 models Hillman has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The record places its introduction in 1931. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

To read the Hillman "Sixteen", "Hawk" and "80" properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1930s were the streamline decade, when aerodynamics entered body design, independent suspension spread, and grand-prix engineering began flowing into road cars even as the Depression thinned the industry. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Chevrolet Chevrolet Suburban, the Bugatti Bugatti Type 57, the Alfa Romeo Alfa Romeo 8C — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Hillman "Sixteen", "Hawk" and "80" reads like this: the record lists its engine as Wizard 75, 20/70 and 7-seater: / 2810 cc / Hawk and 80: / 3181 cc; quoted output is Wizard 75: 54 bhp @3,400 rpm / Tax horsepower 20.9 / / 20/70 / / Hawk: 75 bhp @3,400 rpm; kerb weight is recorded at Wizard chassis only: 19½ cwt, 2184 lb / / Hawk Wingham 33½ cwt 3752 lb; drive goes through engine, single dry-plate clutch and 4-speed gearbox with central gear lever (all mounted as a unit); open propeller shaft with metal joints; half-floating spiral bevel driven rear ; the layout is FR. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.

Its place in the Hillman story

Within Hillman's own catalogue the Hillman "Sixteen", "Hawk" and "80" sits alongside the Hillman Imp, the Hillman 14, the Hillman 20 8-cylinder, the Hillman Avenger. The record names the Hillman Vortic as its predecessor and the Humber Snipe as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to sp = uk. Assembly is recorded at class = Executive car.

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

From catalogue to ownership

The catalogue records what the Hillman "Sixteen", "Hawk" and "80" was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.