Mulliners of Birmingham was a British coachbuilding business in Bordesley Green, Birmingham, with factories in Bordesley Green Road and in Cherrywood Road making standard bodies for specialist car manufacturers.
Although not financially connected with the other coachbuilders with Mulliner in their name, the original proprietors who established the firm in the late 1880s to make business carriages seem to have descended from the same Northampton family.
From fuondation to World War II[]
Mulliners built a few bodies for Daimler before deciding the future lay in making large production runs for motor companies that did not have their own facilities. An early contract was gained from Calthorpe, then a booming company, leading to probably the entire output going to them and eventual close financial and corporate links between the two. Mulliners was taken over by Calthorpe Motor Company in 1917.
After Calthorpe failed in 1924, the managing director of Mulliners, Louis Antweiler, who was also on the Calthorpe managing board, arranged to buy the coachbuilding company which he renamed Mulliners Limited. He obtained contracts with Clyno and Austin for whom he made many Weymann style fabric bodies for the Austin 7. When the fashion for fabric bodies declined, the business with Austin went but was replaced by orders from Hillman, Humber, Standard and Lanchester.
In 1929 the company went public. The main business was now with Daimler and Lanchester making the bodies for the cheaper range of cars with, confusingly, Arthur Mulliner of Northampton making the up-market models. Alvis was added to the list of customers. During World War II they made bodies for military vehicles and troop carrying gliders.
Postwar[]
After the war body making for cars resumed with Aston Martin, Armstrong Siddeley and Triumph joining the list of customers. Standard-Triumph had by then a shortage of body making capacity and this led them to buy the company in 1958 by which time Mulliners made 700 car bodies each week.
Closure[]
On 7 December 1960 a shock announcement by Standard-Triumph International, itself about to be sold to prosperous trucks and buses manufacturer Leyland Motors Limited, revealed that the factory would close. "Mulliners Limited, one of the oldest body firms in the motor trade, employs about 800 workers having recently laid off some 750 as redundant because of a shortage of orders". Their products would continue "to be made by other Midlands factories within the S-TI group".