Donald Stokes – Driven To Write

Running With Scissors [Part Ten]

Sifting through the debris

“Top of the world, ma!” Image: Auto Bild

In the build-up to 1980’s Motorfair, where the crucially important Austin Mini-Metro was to make its public debut, BL’s TV advertising was to put it mildly, of a decidedly patriotic nature. An array of doughty Metros standing sentinel on Dover’s white cliffs to repel Britain’s foreign invaders certainly got the message across, but in any conflict situation, real or imaginary, there is always collateral damage.

Because within a year of Metro’s triumphant debut, Britain’s homegrown supermini had dealt Allegro a fatal blow. Despite their differences in size and mission, such was the level of domestic enthusiasm for Britain’s ‘car to beat the world’ that by the end of 1981, Allegro sales, already in freefall, had almost halved. For the BL board, the evidence was unequivocal, and under Sir Michael Edwardes’ pragmatic leadership, it was elected to Continue reading “Running With Scissors [Part Ten]”

Running With Scissors [Part Seven]

Aggro on the shopfloor

The early 1970s was a volatile time in Britain. Hopes of lasting prosperity were dissolving amid galloping inflation, socio-political strife, ineffectual government interventions to prop up a stalling economy and a seething dissatisfaction amidst the toiling classes, fed up with being overpromised and repeatedly brought up short.

Throughout the previous decade, car manufacturing plants across the UK had become a hotbed of political foment, and those of the former British Motor Corporation were amongst the most restive – owing to an array of factors which included a myopic and at times, barely competent management and successive government policies, which had the (perhaps unintentional) effect of denying workers a reliable source of income^[1].

The labour factor

Pay was a perennial issue, but so were working conditions, those within many British car plants being not too far evolved from the pre-war era. Neither plant, machinery nor working practices had been modernised, conditions were primitive and given the at best ambivalent attitude of management towards line workers, there was little incentive for them to Continue reading “Running With Scissors [Part Seven]”

Running With Scissors [Part Two]

Several shadows loomed large over Allegro: ADO16, its benighted imperator and a man called Paradise.

Sequels are often a tricky balancing act. Alter the recipe and the audience may reject it, reprise the original too closely and they are just as likely to feel short-changed.

The Allegro’s Sixties predecessor would prove a tough act to follow. Despite a lack of meaningful ongoing development, the ADO16 series remained Britain’s best-seller throughout the decade. With such lasting success, the pressure was on BLMC’s product planners and engineers to build upon this with ADO67, the 1100’s belated replacement.

Logically, when scoping the successor to a top-selling product it is sound practice to Continue reading “Running With Scissors [Part Two]”

Elemental Spirit Part 3: When Donald Met Donald

When two West Countrymen clash.

Image: British Leyland (Austin-Morris) Limited

In his biography My World of Cars, Donald Healey recalled a meeting with Sir Donald Stokes in the first few weeks of British Leyland’s existence:

“I was summoned to Donald Stokes’s office at the Standard works in Coventry, he told me he was going to discontinue MG, together with the payment of royalties to the names associated with what were BLMC cars. This included John Cooper and myself, together with Harry Weslake, and John Thornley (MG General Manager) too, was eventually to be retired. He explained that he didn’t need the help of all of us people to Continue reading “Elemental Spirit Part 3: When Donald Met Donald”

God Save the Queen

“There’s no future, in England’s dreaming…”

“That look of distinction”. Image (c) VPOC

Ah, the Allegro: Worst car ever. All Aggro. These and other less flattering terms have been routinely flung like wet rags at BLMC’s 1973 compact saloon offering in the intervening decades since the car ceased production in 1984. But while ADO67 itself would over time become notorious, its more dignified Kingsbury derivation was the object of ridicule pretty much from the outset.

Introduced in September 1974, the Vanden Plas 1500’s debut was greeted not only with a gilded tureen of derision but a sizeable component of incredulity; not so much for what it was, but largely for the manner in which it had been executed. So, what in the name of all that was sacred and holy possessed Vanden Plas to Continue reading “God Save the Queen”

Not-So-Guilty-Yearnings

There’s that Dream Garage that most car people compile at least once in their lives, and some car people compile once a week – or three times a day.

Generally these are straightforward cars, exotic maybe, but four wheels, internal combustion engine and at least two seats. Of course I have one of these which, with the exception of a couple of constants such as an R Type Bentley Continental, is usually in a state of flux. However, there’s also that other list of vehicles that are possibly even less practical than a Lamborghini Murceliago (a car I have so little interest in I can’t even be bothered to spell-check) but that exert a strange fascination. For me that list is less changeable.

Continue reading “Not-So-Guilty-Yearnings”