HARRIS MANN 1938-2023
British stylist Harris Mann passed away on 14th August at the age of 85. Famed above all for his work on the Triumph TR7 and Austin Allegro (which we will come back to shortly), Harris had a long and varied career that started with an apprenticeship with the coach and bus firm Duple. A six month stint in the USA with the Loewy Consultancy followed. Back in the UK, a stay at Commer working on commercial vehicles was next, before he joined Ford's design studios in 1962.
When Ford's Model Line Director, Roy Haynes, moved to BMC in 1967, Harris went with him. When Haynes returned to Essex in 1969, Harris was to take over as Chief Stylist for what was by then British Leyland, and this is the company with which he was always most associated in the minds of enthusiasts.
Despite his vast portfolio, Harris will always be best remembered for three BL models – the Allegro, the ADO71 Princess and the TR7. This is in many ways a poisoned chalice as his sleek design for the Allegro was massively compromised by engineering and interference until it was essentially designed by committee, while both it and the Princess line suffered horribly in the eyes of the public because of a disastrous lack of quality control in their manufacture. As for the TR7, that was simply too advanced and too modern for many traditionalists to accept.
Harris eventually stepped away from the BL in-fighting and politics in 1983 to pursue a rich and varied freelance career. He was to return to Longbridge in later years though, commissioned by MG-Rover to add his expertise to design work on the MG Z cars as well as the MG XPower SV supercar.
One gets the idea that Harris was rather surprised in later years to discover that he was something of a hero to those of us on the classic scene, and that his designs were being reappraised and seen in a new light once they had been separated from the turmoil that characterised BL in the years during which the cars evolved. In return, Harris gave freely of his time to clubs and enthusiasts alike. That's when many of us were lucky enough to learn more about the man behind the name, and we invariably discovered that he was a genuinely kind, pleasant and generous person as well as a talented stylist. Perhaps even more than the many great cars he influenced, that is what we will remember most about this wonderful man.