Humber Hawk Mk V - a rare 50s British classic car! (Hawk mk 5)

Humber Hawk mk v
The first thing you see when you pick up the brochure for a Humber Hawk MK V is the Royal Warrant front and top centre of the brochure, because it’s always worth mentioning on a Humber video that the cars were popular not only with Royals, the Queen Mother had a Humber, but statesmen and politicians. Winston Churchill also had a Humber.
In short, Humber was a name you could trust and it came with heritage and distinction without being over the top and slightly vulgar like many luxe/expensive brands of the 21st century.
The car was available as a saloon as we’ve got today and a touring limousine - probably one for the more well heeled client! There was a price difference on these and the price including purchase tax for the saloon at time of launch in 1952 was £1,1129 - 5 shillings and 7 pence. The price for the limo was £1,261 and 10 shillings.
The Hawk mk5 was a car which wasn’t designed to win races but to win over those who wanted a comfortable, luxe driving experience. The car was said to offer light, responsive controls, synchromatic fingertip gear change and precision steering.
It was said to be a car which was docile in traffic and fast on the open road and with this car being introduced before the advent of motorways, a driver didn’t need to be racing along at high speeds for long periods of time in the same way we do today, so with a top speed quoted by Popular Classics in 1991 as 73mph, it was more than sufficient for roads of the time. It also makes it keen enough to keep on today’s roads - especially with so many places now limiting to 50mph!
The gearbox which I’ll show you on test is a four speed column change with control ring synchro on second, third and fourth gear. There’s also a safety catch on reverse to ensure it’s not selected in error - because it can cause real problems - especially at high speed!
The brakes as I mention later, are drums all round. The system chosen by Humber was a Lockheed two leading shoe system with hydraulic operation. They’re 9 inch drums on these and handbrake is the umbrella style as one might expect with the bench seat.
One of the more bold claims within the sales brochure for these is the suspension. Humber promised smooth, stable travel under all road conditions; a selling point when selling across the road to countries without majority tarmacced roads in the 1950s as we have today but also in UK today, where dodging potholes could be classed as a modern sport.
The suspension to front is independent with silico-manganese coil springs. To rear, it’s long semi-elipitic springs. The steel and rubber bushes were said to eliminate many greasing points and the torsion bar was supposed to eliminate sway; which to be fair, it does. They weren’t wrong!
Interestingly, Humber also stated they’d considered vehicle safety, something which wasn’t the keen first thought as it might be today in the early 50s. The vehicle’s chassis is a rigid and fully boxed girder fame with cruciform cross-members. This was chosen by Humber because they wanted a car which could withstand the stresses and strains of rapid acceleration and braking but also stand up to both road and track testing.
It can be quite hard to judge on a video how big some of these cars are, so this is 108.5 inches/4,585mm long with a width of 70 inches/1,778mm. The unladen weight is 2,919lb/1,324kg.
The colours available were beech green with light fawn upholstery, metallic quartz blue with light fawn, black with red which is what we’ve got here, gun with red and satin bronze with red.
That is a brief overview on the Humber Hawk mk5 - just like many Rootes cars, it didn’t run for long before being upgraded and after coming to market in September 1952, it was replaced with the Hawk mk6 in June 1954.