The Rootes Group’s answer to the Mini, codename Apex, the Hillman Imp, was launched in 1963. The Coventry based manufacturer needed a new factory to assemble the newcar. The logical place to have built this might have been in Coventry, and Rootes did in fact own land next to their existing plant at Ryton-on-Dunsmore. However, the government wished to encourage manufacturing in deprived areas or where older forms of manufacturing were dying out. Central Scotland had traditionally had a big shipbuilding industry, but the rise in air travel meant that shipbuilding was in decline, as were the number of jobs in the region.
Therefore, due to a combination of sticks (no planning consent for the new factory in Coventry) and carrots (lots of lovely grants to build the factory where the government wanted it) Rootes’ new assembly plant ended up being built in Scotland on land outside the village of Linwood, near Paisley, close to motorways, railways, the River Clyde and to Glasgow airport. The village was expanded with new homes to accommodate the readily available workforce, some
