Graham Robson
DEVELOPING ROOTES
Graham recalls some of the more unusual highlights of his time at Rootes.
It seems to be a long time ago that I was head-hunted to the design/ development area of Chrysler UK, eventually to run a big department covering what was titled Road Proving. That meant submitting prototypes to all manner of indignities before signing them off for production. However, this column isn’t about the routine, the meetings, the reports or the endless trundling around proving ground surfaces, but rather it is about the odd occasions when my eyebrows were well and truly raised.
The most interesting project was to drive prototype Avenger GTs and Chrysler 180s all the way down to the southern tip of Italy and back in high summer – think of staying overnight in Reggio di Calabria (the ‘Big Toe’ of Italy, if you get my drift), and persuading the rest of the crew not to visit Sicily for the following day. Another memorable one was being asked to drive down to Essex to borrow a brand-new Ford Escort RS1600 for a week or so. In secret (we thought) our 16-valve Avenger-BRM was being developed, and we wanted a comparison. I was amazed that Ford already seemed to know what was brewing, and I was equally amazed to get my first impression of their BDA engine; Needless to say the AvengerBRM project died soon after that...
Worthy projects which didn’t seem exciting at the time included spending fruitless months searching for a larger, more versatile and more promising site as a proving ground than Wellesbourne Airfield (which Chrysler then had on lease). Marcus Chambers had recently moved over from Competitions to run this search. According to the organisation chart he reported to me, but to hell with that – he was senior enough to do his own thing, and so reported directly to Peter Wilson, Executive Engineer of Product Proving at Rootes' Passenger Car Division. Marcus homed in on Bruntingthorpe, did a great job and organised test visits, where the locals then expressed ‘horror’ at the noise and pollution we would raise. They were wrong, we were right, but unfortunately we couldn’t raise the finance to do the deal.
Two well-known racing drivers were in my department – Bernard Unett (saloon car star) and John Harris (clubbie and Healey test driver in his spare time) – which sometimes made our ride-and-drive test sessions more interesting than expected. We did a lot of work in making a Hunter handle a lot better than before, so that the Hunter GLS (do you remember that beast, with a Rapier H120 engine?) felt suitable, and on the other hand we all agreed that a brand-new 2.5-litre V6 engine intended for the British version of the Chrysler 180 (which would have been a new Humber, but that particular type was cancelled too) wasn’t likely to be much good. Driving the V6-engined Hunter mule was quite good fun though.
Top priority in my time at Chrysler was going to be that 180, which was a full size bigger than the Avenger, and which we only knew as the C- Car. They were fully disguised at the time, and I drove them often but never felt enthralled. Mind you, there was one occasion when I saw a mock-up in Roy Axe’s styling studio and I opened a door to take a look at the new fascia – an action which instantly wiped off all the mocked-up stripes, badges and mirrors from that door and the front wing next to it. Needless to say, I was not popular.
Occasionally, just occasionally, interesting off-beam odd jobs pierced the boredom, like borrowing a Porsche 911 to assess the noise it made and its handling characteristics, or borrowing a Citroën SM to see if there was any future in their type of suspension. It was also my job to clear the proving run of a Hunter estate car to Lincolnshire in the strawberry season, so that the technician could then return with the load space full of pick-your-own fruit.
I also hosted BTCC Saloon Car Champion Bill McGovern (who was supreme in Imps) to an executive ‘thank you’ lunch where he didn’t understand us, and most of us didn’t understand him. Certainly none of the other Chrysler engineers could visualise how the racing Imp engine could be persuaded to produce more than 100bhp.
There were days when arguments over the nuances of impending US exhaust emission and safety legislation could almost send me to sleep (you have no idea how complicated the theory of ’one hand’ safety belt fixing can sound in committee), and I never got my way in forcing through an early installation of cruise control, but this was balanced by working for Peter Wilson, who had been an RAF test pilot and had also raced for Bristol at Le Mans. It was also fun that he and I lived near each other in Warwick, that we both ran Rapier H120s for a time, and that we regularly drove in convoy to the office in Coventry. Did I say in convoy? Well, I'm sure you can use your imaginations!
But then I started writing books, and I haven’t really worked since...