Whitley

Whitley is a British company part of the Whitley Group, a sub-brand specialized on selling luxury cars since 1935. The company had many owners during its years, including Dearborn for a time, but they were eventually sold off and became their own self-sustained brand in 2008. Whitley sells mostly sporty cars for rich people, and their designs are timeless.

History

Whitney Motors was founded in 1935, after the previous company W&W Cars was unable to continue selling cars after going bankrupt, with all its assets being purchased by the Whitney family.

The first Whitney vehicle appeared in the same year, and it was a success with the public, leading the company to continue producing sports cars. The years after were plagued with long backorders waiting and materials shortages, which was very damaging for the company.

Despite this, the company made several different sports cars with eye-catching designs. With their lineup of cars on the WC1 platform, Whitney sold the highly popular WK100, WK110, WK130 and WK160 in several areas of the world. This led the company to participate in racing events with their cars, winning in 1951 and 1953 the 24H GrinVits Vue race. The victory in 1955 wasovershadowed by the worst motorsport accident in history. Two more wins came in 1957 and 1959.

In 1965, the company was acquired by a British group that was attempting to buy Whitney by buying its dependencies in years prior, forming the British Automation Company, who would go on to produce buses for the entirety of the UK. This new alliance didn't last for long and it was nationalized in 1975.

In 1984, the new members of the Whitney family amassed enough capital privately to buy back the company from British Automation Company, and returned into an independent company, and eventually a public one in 1986, until 1989 where Dearborn Europe offered to buy all the shares from the company's public shareholders. In 1990, the company's stock listing was removed and it became part of Dearborn. In 2000, the acquisition of luxury SUV British automaker Solihill Motors from HFW and assigned them as part of Whitney, changing their lineup to be positioned with the company.

In 2007, Dearborn decided to sell Whitney and found a buyer in 2008, an Indian company called Mumbai Group, which bought Whitney wholesale. Since then, the company has created several new lineups, including the new WC10 platform, shared with their Pace and Posse vehicles.

In 2024, the company announced that by 2026, it would turn into an electric-only vehicles brand, and all their cars with internal combustion engines would be discontinued by the end of the year. The move caused a lot of confusion among the press and fans, and the confusion only grew as the company would announce a new lineup of vehicles with very questionable designs.

Featured Vehicles

Regular

Pace GT (2019)

The Pace Project started in 2012, with the Pace Concept and eventually turned into a production vehicle. In 2019, it received a facelift and the new GT trim. Whitley made plenty of cosmetic changes to the vehicle, and put in a new engine, making the Pace GT their best coupé sports car ever.

The Pace GT comes with a supercharged 5.0L V8 engine, in a F4 layout and a 6-speed manual transmission.

Posse (2022)

Whitley put everything they could to make the second generation Posse as good as it could be. With a sportier look out of the factory, the British upper-class got a vehicle they could daily drive on weekdays and race on the weekends.

The Posse comes with a supercharged 3.0L V6 engine, in a F4 layout and a 6-speed manual transmission.

Ingenius X450 (1992)

The Ingenius X450 was a crazy-enough-to-work idea from Whitley. They already had the world-record for ‘fastest aluminium-bodied sports car’ so why not try it again? The end result was this, another world-record breaking vehicle. Only 300 of these were made, so it’s also an incredibly rare vehicle.

Powering the production version of the Ingenius X450 was a twin-turbocharged 3.5L V6 engine with a RMR layout and a 5-speed manual transmission.