We had only just taken disguises off the first 1962 MGB when I drove it into the paddock at Charterhall 23 September 1962. Sticky tape over badges and tax disc fooled nobody. Besides, ostensibly still-secret MGBs had been running around the Midlands for weeks. We had taken 523CBL to the MIRA track, painstakingly and carefully timing its speed, measuring fuel consumption and acceleration. We weighed it, took barometric pressure, temperature, wind speed and track surface wet, or dry. We noted using Premium grade pump fuel, approx. 90 Octane by Research Method but adding a sinister “see text” on the published road test. It seems the instruction book recommended 100 Octane, yet we still thought 97-98 Octane perfectly satisfactory.
Joseph Lowrey BSc (1918-2009) had taken charge. Technical editor, pernickety, precise, perfectionist, dry, reserved, not entirely humourless; Leys School, Cambridge and University College London, he graduated in 1939. Joe didn’t speak about it, but he was one of that wartime generation, like Alan Turing, whose genius was crucial. Called up into the Royal Engineers as a lance corporal, he was swiftly sent to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough and between 1940 and 1946 found himself “… chauffeured around the skies in experimental aeroplanes of the Engine Research Flight”.
Lowrey’s spell at Farnborough brought him in touch with fellow-HRG enthusiast William Boddy MBE (1913-2011). Writing technical handbooks for the Ministry of Aircraft Production, in spare evenings founding the Light Car and Edwardian section of the Vintage Sports Car Club (VSCC), Brooklands historian Boddy wrote for wartime slim, pared-down monthly Motor Sport. Boddy had a priceless asset. Even under strict petrol rationing he managed to secure a few gallons for some obscure purpose of public morale. Together with Farnborough colleague Denis Sargent Jenkinson (1920-1996) Lowrey scrounged lifts and started writing too. Getting paid to pursue his hobby during “black-out” evenings was so appealing that in 1942 Lowrey became a spare time freelance contributor to The Motor.
In 1962, for the MGB test, he was now my boss. The team of Charles Bulmer and newly recruited me worked together with lead writer Roger Bell on the MGB. We drove it for weeks, through its official announcement on 19 September for the test published 24th October. My contribution was copious notes compiled after a thousand miles to Scotland and back. I was back in my old stamping ground, giving former chums at Charterhall, Graham and Gerry Birrel, Jimmy and Jackie Stewart, their first glimpse of the British Motor Corporation’s masterpiece, which is now approaching its 60th anniversary.
Embossing Turing along with his code-breaking on the new £50 note, is not only a tribute to him, but also to the pernickety, precise Lowreys, Boddys and Jenks’s. We owe them.
https://dovepublishing.co.uk/titles
JIM CLARK: Tribute to a Champion by Eric Dymock
MG Classics by Eric Dymock. Model by Model, Books 1, 2 and 3
