1924 Hispano Suiza H6C Hooper Saloon Limousine - Chassis 11015

Country of origin:	Spain
Produced in:	1924
Internal name:	H6C
Designed by:	Hooper
Author:	Wouter Melissen
Last updated:	October 01, 2025
Download:	All images

Chassis: 11015
Great War veteran and future ‘Bentley Boy’, 25-year old Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Glen Kidston commissioned a Hooper bodied Hispano Suiza H6 in 1924. It was only the fifth example built on the competition derived, short-chassis H6C or ‘Boulogne’ specification chassis. Built in the same batch were cars for Marc Birkigt himself, the Rothschild family and André Dubonnet (the 'Tulipwood' Torpedo). It was one of just five Hispano Suizas clothed by Royal coachbuilder Hooper and each had a distinct design. The Kidston H6C was fitted with a formal ‘Saloon Limousine’ that featured a split V-shaped windscreen and was appropriately finished in ‘Battleship Grey’ with black. Kidston ticked almost every box on the option list adding £196 to the total price for the bodywork of £750. These options ranged from a Brooks trunk, Triplex Safety Glass, silver-plated Zeiss headlamps to painted ‘GPGK’ monograms on the doors. It also featured cloth upholstery, four silk cushions and silk curtains to all windows, Asprey cigarette box, polished walnut instrument panel, a gradient meter, altimeter, Atlantic spotlight, fully fitted tool boxes and no fewer than four different horns. The complete car cost close to £3,000, compared to £550 for a Bentley Speed Model or the equivalent of nearly average UK houses at the time.

The H6C Hooper Saloon Limousine was ready in time to star at the 1924 London Motor Show. Shortly after Glen Kidston took delivery of the Boulogne Hispano Suiza, he lapped Brooklands with it at 84 mph from a standing start. It was also used in 1925 for Kidston’s wedding to socialite Nancy Muriel Denise Soames. This was such an occasion that it was filmed with the newlyweds shown getting into the back seats of the Hispano Suiza. It was also featured in a 1925 Autocar article dubbed ‘A Fine Fleet’, which chronicled Kidston’s collection that also included a Bugatti Type 35 Grand Prix car and Bentley 3-Litre Speed Model at the time. Barely a year old, the Hispano Suiza had already covered 15,000 miles, on British and continental roads, when the Autocar was published. Towards the end of the decade, Kidston achieved even more fame as 'Bentley Boy' by finishing second at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1929 and then winning the race with his best friend Woolf Barnato in 1930. He sadly lost life in a plane crash in South Africa just weeks after setting the London to Cape Town air record.

After his 1929 Le Mans adventure, Kidston ordered a striking Gurney Nutting bodied Bentley Speed Six, for which the Hispano Suiza most likely had to make room in the Kidston garage. The next owner is not known but it reappeared after the War in the ownership of Scottish Navy Lieutenant Commander and Hispano Suiza enthusiastMorin Scott. It was most probably not in the best of conditions and a much lighter 'boat-tail' body was mounted on the original mechanicals. This had been constructed by Morin himself following the advice of racing legend Clive Gallop, who had helped create many pre-War racing specials on a variety of chassis. Scott raced the now white 8-Litre Hispano Suiza until October 1956 when he took the car with him as the family moved to Jamaica. Shortly thereafter, it was sold to Jamaica-based New Zealand businessman Mark Jennings. He would go on to own for many decades and by the late 1970s replaced the Morin ‘boat tail’ with another 1920s-inspired body and painted the car yellow. Jennings passed away in 2015 and the Hispano Suiza passed to his sons John and Paul. They spent the next few years finding an appropriate new custodian for the Hispano Suiza and found one in Glen’s nephew Simon Kidston. As a result, the Hispano Suiza H6C 11015 was reunited with the Kidston family some 94 years after it was first built.

After it was repatriated to England, a close inspection revealed that the Hispano Suiza was remarkably original with an unmolested chassis, engine, gearbox, brakes, wheels, bonnet and bulkhead still in place. After two years of detective work by Steve Wakefield, the Hooper coachbuilding archive was found to have survived in a remote Cold War airfield storage facility of the British Science Museum. In 2020, a complete restoration was started with the surviving components being refurbished by Jonathan Wood and a new body created by Jason Rangecroft, successor to Rod Jolley’s coachbuilding firm. Veteran Rolls-Royce historian John Fasal tracked down the drawings of the GPGK monograms. Loro Piana wove the cloth for the interior and a 200-year old royal silk mill recreated the correct silk details. The last piece of the puzzle was formulating the exact grey, which was applied by CW Coachworks.

Requiring 18,000 man hours of labour, the restoration was finally ready in the summer of 1925 and in time for the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance complete with the original ‘HS 3566’ registration number, re-granted by the British DVLA after Bugatti historian Mark Morris visited Scotland to unearth the 1924 registration records. The Hispano Suiza H6C Hooper Saloon Limousine finished runner-up in the class, losing out only to the ‘Tulip Wood’ bodied sister car that would go on to win ‘Best of Show’ later in the day. The Kidston H6C also received the Alec Ullman Trophy for excellence in design and engineering.

Fittingly, the H6C is back in the hands of the family of the original owner where it is reunited with the Bugatti Type 35 that had also been originally owned by Glen Kidston. The Hispano Suiza and Bugatti were photographed together again at Astor House in the fall of 2025, to recreate the Autocar photograph that had been published as part of the 'A Fine Fleet' article.