Car showroom entrepreneur who rescued Bradford City AFC
JACK TORDOFF, who has died aged 86, turned a single Bradford motor workshop and petrol station into a prosperous chain of car showrooms across the North East of England.
Many northern drivers have paused to wonder about the origins of the brand name “JCT600” which today adorns some 54 dealerships, representing marques ranging from Vauxhall and Volkswagen to Porsche and Ferrari and employing more than 2,000 people. It was in fact the number plate of a Mercedes 600 which Tordoff bought as a rally car in the late 1950s and later transferred to other cars in which he competed during the 1960s and 1970s.
Meanwhile JCT600 grew to be one of the largest private companies in Yorkshire – with annual sales of some £1.3 billion and a reputation for quality of service driven by Jack’s personal mantra, “always put the customer first”. After a career spanning 71 years he was hugely respected throughout the UK motor trade and was inducted in the Automotive Management Hall of Fame in 2018.
The company he created remains very much a family concern, headquartered in Bradford and run by Jack’s younger son John – who was born in the family’s flat above the first showroom – with his elder son Ian as a director and seven of Jack’s grandchildren working in the business.
Jack Crossley Tordoff was born on May 5 1935, the son of Edward Tordoff and his wife Clara, née Crossley. The Tordoffs, victuallers and textile workers in previous generations, were long-established in the village of Wibsey, now a Bradford suburb. Edward founded Tordoff Motors with two partners in 1946, but died, in his forties, four years later.
Educated at local schools, Jack left at 15 to become an apprentice mechanic. After National Service in REME, rising to corporal, he returned at 21 to borrow £1,000 from his mother, buy out his father’s partners and venture into car sales as well as servicing.
He built a showroom close to the firm’s original Brooklands Garage in Bradford’s Sticker Lane and rebranded the business as JCT600 in 1961. His Bradford BMW dealership was destroyed by fire during race riots in July 2001, but Tordoff remained intensely loyal to his home city.
In 1973, Tordoff had also became a director of Bradford City AFC, then languishing in the Fourth Division. He resigned from the board in 1978 but returned to become chairman and later life president, having helped to pull the club out of administration in 1983.
He led the redevelopment of its Valley Parade stadium after a catastrophic fire in May 1985 which claimed the lives of 56 fans. JCT600 has been a major sponsor of the club for many years.
Tordoff’s greatest motor rallying success was his victory in the 1973 International Circuit of Ireland Rally, driving a Porsche 2.7 RS. His grandson Sam Tordoff is a racing driver who came second in the 2016 British Touring Car championship.
Jack himself was driving another Porsche – a 4x4 model – in 2018 when it was flipped on to its roof after hitting a bollard near his company headquarters; he survived with minor injuries.
In younger days, Tordoff also held a pilot’s licence and kept a Cessna light aircraft at Leeds-bradford airport. In later years he enjoyed a holiday home in Barbados.
He was appointed MBE in 2007 and raised to OBE in 2018; on receiving the higher honour he declared: “I am Bradford born and bred and have never lost sight of my roots … I remain a proud Yorkshireman, and never more so than today.” His family’s fortune was recently estimated at £376 million.
Jack Tordoff married Jean Softley in 1955. She survives him with their two sons; their daughter Lesley died in 2019.
Jack Tordoff, born May 5 1935, died October 3 2021