LIFE IN THE FAST LANE
With a knack for all things turbocharged, Bob Henderson’s hobby turned into a lifelong career, producing Scotland’s first classic supercar, finds Morag Bootland
On the trail of Scotland's very own supercar in Argyll
As far as I’m aware there is no legend to suggest that a Nessie-like beast might lurk beneath the surface of Loch Gilp. But if you wander through Lochgilphead, which lies right at the end of the loch, you may just come across a monster motor because this little town in Argyll is the unlikely home of Scotland’s first supercar, the Argyll Turbo GT. Lochgilphead is still home to one of the cars as well as the man behind the marque, Bob Henderson, who at the ripe old age of 86 is still working on cars in his engineering Aladdin’s cave of a workshop.
The culmination of years of work turbo charging other cars and a decade of engineering development was launched in a flurry of press excitement and glamour by the then Duke of Argyll, Ian Campbell, at Inveraray Castle in 1983 and was hailed by the press as the reincarnation of the Scottish motor industry.
When I describe the Turbo GT as a monster, it is far from ugly, but it is huge, thanks mainly to its three-metre-long wheelbase. ‘Nobody had ever done a long wheelbase car like this before,’ Bob says. ‘It enabled us to use the same size of wheels and tyres all round, unlike other supercars from the Lamborghini onwards, which have dirty great wheels at the back.’
The louvre design of the headlights helped with glare and created a build-up of air pressure that prevented the lights getting dirty. Most supercars suffer from a lack of visibility but Bob used his knowledge of aviation engineering to solve the issue in his design. ‘I pinched an idea from the Battle of Britain fighter pilots and put a mirror up in the roof, allowing the driver to look out over the top of the car.’
These are just some of the innovations that led the motoring press to describe the Argyll as ‘a unique motoring experience’ and as having ‘no real vices’.
Bob’s interest in cars was the result of his years as a young man working in the rubber industry in Malaya, where he was paid enough to afford to run a decent car and motors became his hobby. He went on to fly and engineer Mosquito aircraft before moving back to cars with a successful motoring business in Ottawa in Canada.
On his return to Scotland he struggled to find the right place to settle down. ‘My family originally came from Fife, but we had a lease to a castle on Loch Awe which was our holiday home, so the kids grew up holidaying in Argyll and we loved the area.
‘We started looking in Oban and Inveraray and then a chap called me about this place in Lochgilphead one day and it was perfect.
‘Nothing glamorous, nothing new, just lots of little buildings that we could use as the machine shop, the roller dyno, assembly shop and engine dyno.’
Bob and his right-hand man Henry Crow started out looking to build a car that was just one stage up from a Ford kit car, but with interest from then Scottish Rally Champion Andrew Smith, the design evolved and ended up being a mid-engine supercar, giving the ultimate performance. The V8 version of the Argyll had a top speed on 188mph, although Bob assures me that he’s only ever driven it at 172mph on a public road.
Bob and Henry created the cars almost entirely in Lochgilphead. The body work was also made in Scotland by a friend of Bob’s at Solway Marine in Dumfries, where they were more used to making boats than cars.
Bob was keen to employ a local workforce to bring his car to fruition and despite never employing more than a dozen people at any one time he was always impressed by their ability.
‘You could give them a rough sketch on the back of an envelope, they adapted very quickly to the job,’ says Bob. ‘Some of them were born engineers, as so many Scots are.’
Bob even designed the distinctive upside-down diamondshaped badge himself and had it made in a foundry in Falkirk.
Bob is cagey when it comes to giving the exact figures of how many cars he produced, but he has one in Lochgilphead and knows of at least two others – one on Mull and one in Birmingham. He will say that numbers were ‘into the dozens, rather than the hundreds’.
Despite offers to put the car into mass production Bob was never tempted to leave Lochgilphead. ‘We were pushed to go into a factory in the suburbs of Glasgow,’ he says. ‘But I didn’t come back to Scotland and employ people from this rural area to do the dirty on them just for the sake of upping numbers.
‘We also refused a large American contract because they wanted to go to low profile tyres. People don’t seem to understand that about 70% of the suspension is done by the tyres, not the springs and shockers. There was no way I was going to ruin a perfectly good car by putting low profile tyres on it.’
Fans of Scottish-built cars may know that there had already been an Argyll car manufactured in Glasgow and then Alexandria from 1899 until 1932. The Argyll name wasn’t one that Bob would have considered for his own vehicle if it hadn’t been for some encouragement from high places.
It was the local chief constable who put the idea to Bob in the first instance, but it was really Ian Campbell, the Duke of Argyll at the time, who sealed the deal.
‘He told me that he thought it was a great idea to call the car Argyll,’ says Bob. Not only did he approve of the name, but he also launched the car in a flurry of excitement at Inveraray Castle in October 1983, just ahead of its appearance at the last Scottish Motor Show to be held at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow.
The Argyll sign outside his workshop attracts lots of visitors who pop in to visit Bob in his workshop which at one time served as the local dairy and as a laundry during WW2. Bob still has lots of customers too, who come to him for good old-fashioned engineering.
‘We don’t get stuck for much,’ he says. ‘If we need something we can usually make it here. If someone has a real problem with a car in Scotland they’ll very often find their way to us.
‘I suppose if they know you can build a car of that type, quality, speed and ability then you must know something about cars.’
“Bob assures me that he’s only ever driven it at 172mph on a public road