H. J. Mulliner

H. J. Mulliner & Co. was a coachbuilder at Chiswick in west London. The company was formed in 1897 by Henry Jervis Mulliner, and by the 1930s nearly all its output was fitted to Rolls-Royce and Bentley chassis.

H. J. Mulliner & Co. was a coachbuilder operating from Bedford Park, Chiswick, in west London. The company was formed by Henry Jervis Mulliner in 1897 but the business belonged to a family firm founded in Northampton in the 1760s to hire out carriages. Henry Jervis Mulliner was born in Liverpool but raised in Chiswick, and took a special interest in cars, buying a showroom in Brook Street, Mayfair, in 1900. One of his early clients was C. S. Rolls, who had a body built on a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost for his own use.

In December 1909 he sold a controlling interest to John Croall & Sons of Edinburgh, who kept the family connection by employing his wife’s brother, Frank Piesse, to run the business. Bodies were fitted to other chassis, but by the 1930s nearly the entire output went on Rolls-Royces and Bentleys.

Rolls-Royce bought Mulliner in July 1959 and merged it with Park Ward, which it had owned since 1939, to form Mulliner Park Ward in 1961. “Mulliner” is now the personal commissioning department for Bentley.