H.R. Owen
 |
|
| PLC | |
| Industry | Vehicle retailer |
| Founded | 1932 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
|
Key people
|
Harold Rolfe Owen (Founder) Ken Choo(CEO) |
| Products | Luxury cars |
| Revenue | £400 million |
|
Number of employees
|
500 |
| Website | www.hrowen.co.uk |
H.R. Owen is Britain's leading luxury motor dealer, and the world's largest retailer in Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti brands. The company is headquartered in London, and operates 14 sales franchises and 17 aftersales franchises.
In 2015, Ferrari, named H.R. Owen as the best Ferrari dealership in the world, after the business scored the maximum number of points in all of the judging categories.
Harold Rolfe Owen was born in Yorkshire on 6 November 1899, and served in the Royal Flying Corps in World War I. Serving in Northern France in 1917 the 18-year-old Captain Owen was badly injured in a crash, spending a week in a coma. It was almost a year before he could walk again, but after the war was over he returned to uniform, joining the Indian Army.
Owen subsequently served for some years abroad, principally at Bombay, Karachi and Aden, before returning to Britain and beginning work at the National Benzole Company. A keen sportsman, Owen’s skill as a polo-player made him welcome at society house parties. This gave him many useful sales contacts when he joined Rolls-Royce and Bentley retailer Jack Barclay in 1927, becoming general manager a short while later.
Harold Owen and Jack Barclay parted company amicably five years later when the former decided to start out on his own in motor retailing – though the two names would be linked once again 68 years later, when the two companies bearing their names were reunited. The new H.R. Owen Rolls-Royce and Bentley dealership opened in Mayfair’s Berkeley Street in February 1932 and continued trading until the outbreak of war, when luxury car retailing came to an enforced halt.
Harold Owen fully intended to resume the motor retail business post-war, but he fell ill when on tank manoeuvres with his regiment, the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, and died 17 February 1940, following an emergency operation to remove a brain tumour.
Following Harold Owen’s death, the H.R. Owen business was bought by Percy Fritz Swain, who reopened the business in 1946 on the old location in Berkeley Street. An astute trader, Swain began to build a larger motor empire, buying up retailers as well as coachbuilders and suppliers. On the death of A.J. Webb in 1955, Swain bought coach builder Freestone and Webb.
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