HARRIS MANN
Fifty years after joining BL he reveals his secrets
As far as many classic car enthusiasts are concerned, Harris Mann is The Man – the one behind the Triumph TR7 design and many other strokes of automotive genius now in the proud and caring ownership of so many Practical Classics readers. Now close to his 80th birthday, we have a cuppa with one of the biggest names in British carmaking.
Q Where did it all start?
‘In 1954, I joined Duple Motor Bodies as an apprentice draftsman and five years later I became a bus body stylist. Later that year, in 1959, I moved to America for a few months to spend some time in the Raymond Loewy design studios, which was an incredible experience as things were so much more exciting over there. I spent eight months in New York but by the summer of 1960 I had joined the Royal Artillery on my National Service. I returned to Duple in 1963 but at the end of that year I moved to Commer before jumping ship to Ford in March 1964.
My apprenticeship with Duple had been in engineering, so when I started with Ford it was as a product design engineer. Within six months I’d moved into vehicle design and soon got involved in the styling of the Cortina MKII where our brief was to incorporate as many features as possible from the 1964 Mustang. That car had been such a success for Ford that the company wanted some of the magic to rub off on the Cortina.
‘In the four years with Ford I progressed to one level below management. When my boss Roy Haynes moved to BMC he took me with him – along with quite a few of the team from the Ford studios.’
Q Why did you switch from Ford to BMC?
‘Roy gave me the opportunity but I moved because I wanted to make a difference. Ford was an incredibly slick operation that knew how to cost everything, so each car was profitable. It was great at benchmarking against its rivals, whereas BMC was old-fashioned. I felt I could improve things at BMC as I’d learned so much at Ford. But the BMC management couldn’t see that there was a problem with poor planning and communication, so making changes to the working practices wasn’t easy. I joined as a senior stylist, working at Cowley.
‘My job was to head up the exterior design team, while Vic Hammond, also ex-ford, was in charge of interior design. The initial plan was for me to work under Phil Clark who had designed the mid-engine Mustang I concept, and came up with the Mustang logo as well as the name.
‘He was a brilliant designer who came from the US to work in Ford’s UK design studios – I learned a lot from him. He was recruited to go to Cowley but he developed a serious illness and died in 1968 aged just 32. If Phil had moved over to BMC, who knows how different my career might have been.’ Q How did the switch from Ford to BMC go? ‘When the new design team started we were shown the Maxi, which had been signed off. We all thought it already looked dated before it had even been launched, so we quickly set about trying to graft a better nose onto it. The first job we were officially tasked with was to restyle the Mini’s front end; we came up with the Clubman. Roy was also given the task of producing a conventional family car to pitch against the Escort – the Marina. The design had already been started when I joined BMC but I had to clean everything up and I came up with a coupé. The Marina represented a turning point for BL as it was the company’s first car with a heating and ventilation system that worked; the company sank millions into creating it. Then Harry Webster was brought in from Triumph in 1969 to work over Roy. While Roy worked in Cowley and was meticulously organised, Harry was based in Longbridge and didn’t plan or communicate so well. It was never going to work so Roy soon left and the Cowley design team had to relocate to Longbridge – but when we got there nobody was expecting us!’ Q What were the cars that you admired back when you were with BMC? ‘Not the Maxi, that’s for sure! I had one as a company car and I didn’t get on with it at all. It seemed like such a missed opportunity compared with the Renault 16 that I’d driven while I was at Ford. We used to try out rivals’ products – at Ford and BMC – and the Renault was absolutely brilliant. It was so comfortable and practical, imaginatively designed, and very enjoyable to drive. We also had a Peugeot 104 that I loved. We also looked at what the Japanese were doing and I thought we could learn a lot from them. But BL management didn’t see the Japanese as a threat – they rubbished every Japanese car we got in.’
Q Did you work with Alec Issigonis?
‘He had his own office and cut himself off from everyone else. He didn’t feed into any of my projects, but he did work on a car even smaller than
‘BL management didn’t see Japan as a threat – they rubbished its cars’