21/08/2026
1962 Humber Super Snipe Estate
The estate version of Humber's flagship saloon used a rear side-window treatment that recalled the Chevrolet Nomad, an American touch that stood out among British estates of the day. Paired headlamps, introduced with the Series III in 1960, mark this as one of the later cars in the third-generation range that began in 1958.
Rootes gained a controlling interest in Humber in 1932 and full ownership in 1935, positioning the Humber marque above Hillman and aiming it at civil servants and professionals with the means to afford it.
The Series I's unitary body, shared with the four-cylinder Hawk, carried a new 2.65-litre six; by 1959 that engine had grown to 3.0 litres and the car had gained front disc brakes. A Borg-Warner three-speed automatic was offered alongside the standard four-speed manual.
In the pecking order of British big saloons, the Super Snipe sat above a Vauxhall Cresta or Ford Zodiac, with the Rover 3-Litre positioned above it in price and prestige.
More than 42,000 examples of this generation of Super Snipe were built at Rootes' Ryton-on-Dunsmore factory near Coventry between 1958 and 1967, when production wound down.
