Coventry was slower to develop, but by the early 20th century had become an important centre for bicycle and car manufacture, soon becoming Britain's most important area for car manufacturing. The city's population soared during the interwar years as a result, and expansion continued after World War II, along with rebuilding following the city's severe wartime bomb damage. A number of factories were built in the city for the wartime effort, including a Daimler shadow plant in the north-west of the city, which was taken over by Jaguar in 1951 and remained the carmaker's main site until 2005, when the factory was closed and the company concentrated on its factories at Castle Bromwich near Birmingham and the Halewood plant (originally a Ford facility) near Liverpool. The Rootes Group, whose brands including Hillman, Singer and Sunbeam, opened a factory at Ryton to the east of the city at the start of World War II, and in peacetime it was converted for car production. Such was the success of the company in the postwar era that it opened another factory at Linwood in Scotland in 1963, just before its takeover by American carmaking giant Chrysler, but financial difficulties saw the company being taken over by French carmaker Peugeot in 1978. From 1986, the plant was used by Peugeot for production of its own cars after it discontinued the Talbot brand, but in December 2006 the plant was closed down, leaving the city with virtually no car industry remaining.