Thanks to the efforts of three successive and talented managers, the British Motor Corporation’s Competitions Department developed into one of the most professional outfits in the world.
This article originally appeared in the August 2005 issue of Octane
The Competitions Department of the British Motor Corporation is arguably the best-ever factory team. From 1955 until 1970, Abingdon produced a stream of rally and race winners that made cars and drivers household names and, in the Mini, created arguably the most valuable brand ever.
None of it could have happened without the Competitions Department Managers, Marcus Chambers (1955-61), Stuart Turner (1961-67) and Peter Browning (1967-70), who between them spanned the era of the amateur to that of the highly organised and totally professional works teams.
Marcus Chambers arrived at Abingdon in 1955 with a motorsport reputation that included two finishes, one a class win in an HRG, at Le Mans in 1938/39. The thoroughness of the Chambers’ approach was untypical of British amateurs of the time. SCH ‘Sammy’ Davis, winner of the 1927 Le Mans with fellow ‘Bentley Boy’ Dudley Benjafield, had advised on the running of the HRG pit and by the long arm of coincidence was the adviser to MG when General Manager John Thornley was looking to bring the marque back into international motorsport.
The outcome was the appointment of Marcus Chambers as the first post-war Competitions Manager. Le Mans was the target, with prototype versions of the new MGA, but first there was the 1955 Monte Carlo Rally to tackle.
The inherited entry showed the problems he faced. The cars, three MG Magnettes from Abingdon and three Austin Westminsters prepared at Longbridge, were overweight and their finishing positions reflected this. The calibre of several of the crews failed to impress, although Willy Cave, who was to become a BMC stalwart subsequently, and the highly influential John Gott were clear exceptions.
The 1955 Le Mans race will always be overshadowed by the Mercedes tragedy, which cost 80 people their lives, so inevitably the MG EX182 success of two cars running the entire 24 hours was diminished. This event and the subsequent RAC TT at Dundrod, which also saw fatalities, appalled the BMC board and Sir Leonard Lord decided that the company’s interests would be best served by rallying and record breaking.
Within the space of a few months, the new Competitions Manager found himself confronting inter-company rivalry and a driving strength which, while adequate on a British club rally, was totally unsuited to international events. But in John Thornley, Marcus Chambers had the staunchest of allies. He smoothed the rivalries, organised a home for the new Competitions Department and at all times was totally supportive. Stuart Turner, who would also report to John Thornley, recalled that he never had a difference or argument with MG’s General Manager.
The influence of HRG in the early days of the BMC Comps Department is significant but little known. Marcus Chambers was again involved with HRG in the immediate post-war years and one driver he knew well was Alpine Cup-winning John Gott – later to become the Chief Constable of Northamptonshire. He knew such successful HRG drivers as Nancy Mitchell and Bill Shepherd and when he joined BMC they followed him to Abingdon.
In 1960, Pat Moss and Ann Wisdom took outright victory in the car-breaking Liège-Rome-Liège Rally, the first time that an International rally had been won by a woman
Mitchell’s impact was immediate, the FIA naming her the 1956 European Ladies Champion. By now, a young Pat Moss had driven an MG TF and a Magnette, a prelude to her ’Healey exploits. The driving foundations of the team were now in place.
The final piece of the jigsaw was the ‘Comps’ mechanics. Marcus Chambers recalls: ‘John Thornley selected the people who were going to work for me. He would say, “I suggest you have Dougie Watts [foreman] and Tommy Wellman”; he knew exactly what type of people to choose. We had no class distinction; the mechanics would eat at the same table as the drivers. So we built up a marvellous team.’
With Doug Hamblin in parallel with Wellman, the team was almost complete. Den Green was to join in 1958, along with Cliff Humphries, who was to reveal hidden talents at engine development, while Bill Price was later to become Marcus Chambers’ assistant. Every Abingdon-entered car was built in its entirety by this team.
With the professional approach on drivers and team in place, BMC was now to pioneer recce-ing before an event. Universal now, it was revolutionary then, but meant that the cars could be paced properly, service areas located for tyres and refuelling, and detailed information gained about roads and surfaces. Such detail could make the difference between success and failure.
Professional as this approach was, there were still problems as a result of insular thinking within BMC. Documents in the Competitions Department records question whether it was acceptable for a British company to link with the French-owned Total petrol (BMC had Castrol sponsorship). So that was another handicap, not being able to use French fuel or oil.
Marcus Chambers was known as a detail man and the definition of him as the British Neubauer, the legendary Mercedes-Benz racing team manager, is apt. On homologation of models, he drew on his family legal background. ‘I had two ancestors who were Chief Justices and one or two other people with legal minds and whether it got any closer to me I don’t know. Our attitude was, look at the regulations. First, understand them. Then, were there any loopholes? You can do a lot without infringing regulations! If you could build a set number of cars to the better specification you could enter them in the normal class.’ The MGA is an example of this, being homologated as the De Luxe model, rather than the standard.
Early in the Chambers era, the MGA was one of the mainstays of the competition programme, along with the MG Magnette and a number of Austins, including the Westminster, A40, A50, A90 and A105. The Riley Pathfinder was rallied, the smaller 1.5 rallied and raced and the Austin-Healey honed into a formidable competition car on road, forest track or race circuit.
To give an idea of the Comps workload, under Marcus Chambers almost 300 cars were prepared for international competition. Many privateers received assistance with preparation and Peter Browning records that, in 1956 alone, some 59 cars went through the ’shop.
Steadily more results came in, with class wins, team prizes, ladies’ prizes, and victory in the 1958 European Ladies Touring Car Championship for Pat Moss and Ann Wisdom. In September 1959 the then-new Austin Seven Mini was given its competition debut by Marcus Chambers – it finished the Viking Rally in 51st place – and then, a month later, Pat Moss, with Stuart Turner co-driving the Morris Mini Minor version, won the Mini Miglia National rally outright.
I stood at the top of a 12-mile section on an Alpine Rally once and Makinen arrived with bald tyres – they’d been new at the start!
In 1960, the big breakthrough came. Pat Moss and Ann Wisdom took outright victory in the car-breaking Liège-Rome-Liège Rally in an Austin-Healey 3000, the first time that an International rally had been won by a woman driver, and BMC’s first win in Europe. The team prize too fell to BMC and with significant results on the Geneva, German and RAC Rallies – the last-named seeing a ’Healey class win for the farming Morley twins – the year ended on a high for Abingdon.
But having honed the team to success and seeing both the Austin-Healey 3000 and Mini demonstrate winning potential, Marcus Chambers decided to move on, wearied by constant travelling and lack of a home life. On his departure Marcus recommended a top British co-driver and the Motoring News Sports Editor as his successor. The stage was set for the entrance of Stuart Turner.
The success and the further potential of both the Mini and Big ’Healey meant that event planning could now be on a much more focused basis. While MG would have a role to play, the need to gain class wins for all the BMC marques was now history. There was also a seismic change in driver nationalities. The policy of only hiring British drivers had been dealt a fatal blow by the success of Erik Carlsson in his Saab and Stuart Turner had noted the performance of a young Rauno Aaltonen.
He was invited to drive for the team on the 1962 Monte Carlo Rally, following the recruitment of Paddy Hopkirk who wanted to drive a Big ’Healey. Finally, Timo Mäkinen was loaned a Mini Cooper for the 1962 RAC Rally, where he finished a brilliant seventh. The new order was in place. National honour was satisfied with British co-drivers, Stuart regarding the likes of Henry Liddon, Paul Easter and Tony Ambrose as the best in the world. Said Stuart Turner, ‘It helped communications and made the drivers [seem] more British.’
Nineteen sixty-two saw the launch of the MGB and in 1963 an ostensibly private entry at Le Mans won its class, the first of three faultless finishes. Hopkirk shared the car with Alan Hutcheson and proved himself an exceptional endurance racer, while Peter Browning, now the General Secretary of the Austin-Healey Club, run from Abingdon, managed the team.
The 1964 Monte Carlo Rally catapulted the Mini into the media spotlight following the victory of Paddy Hopkirk and Henry Liddon. It was a giant-killing feat that completely overshadowed the Morley twins’ GT category victory in the MGB. The following year was Timo Mäkinen’s fabulous victory with Paul Easter.
Nineteen sixty-six was the lights fiasco, after Timo, Rauno and Paddy had finished one-two-three. Observes Stuart Turner: ‘I think it was because the Minis were so quick on some stages that the organisers thought we had switched cars. We were actually better prepared than our rivals, not least with ice note crews. I’m not sure other teams put out garden thermometers to check if certain sections froze overnight. At the top of Mont Ventoux, Donald Morley and I found the corners covered with snow. We waited until the other recce crews had left, checked and found the snow was powdered. We swept it off the road using the floor mats from our A110… and put the Minis on racers.’ Justice was done in 1967 when Rauno Aaltonen recorded his Monte victory, essentially making it four consecutive wins.
How did the Competitions Managers rate the drivers? Marcus Chambers named Nancy Mitchell ‘The Ice Queen’ and thought Pat Moss ‘got better and better and better. The Morley twins [were good] too, although you couldn’t always get them because of their farming.’ Stuart Turner suggested his trio of Mini exponents. ‘I was lucky in that I had Hopkirk, Mäkinen and Aaltonen. Rauno was perhaps the most analytical, Paddy was the best for publicity, and for sheer outright speed, [there was] Timo. I stood at the top of a 12-mile section on an Alpine Rally once and Mäkinen arrived with bald front tyres – they’d been new at the start! But he was quickest on the climb.’
How much cooperation came from Longbridge? Stuart Turner says: ‘I always got total cooperation from Alec Issigonis and it helped to have John Cooper on-side too, because he was concerned about the engines for his single-seaters. The difference Marcus and I enjoyed was John Thornley.’
But times were changing, as final Comps Manager Peter Browning recalls. ‘We had a very happy season [1967] after Stuart left but then the BL edicts started coming. Before, if you had had a problem with a car, you could call on anything you needed and carry on. But this wasn’t the case with Triumph. For the 2.5PI, as on the World Cup Rally, we used to go daily testing at Bagshot. But with Triumph the Chief Engineer had to approve what we were doing, have a drawing and issue a part number. You can appreciate that was impossible. Let’s say a rear spring mount wanted strengthening. The fact was that ace welder Nobby Hall would get the torch out and do it without design approval. I just fudged the paperwork.
‘I had a brief to go around all the divisions in the company and say, what have you got in the cupboard? You were shown the Allegro and Marina and thought, hang on, what can you do? And there was this total Triumph bias against MG. Stokes never even came to Abingdon. They didn’t understand competitions like Thornley, that you can lose an event for all sorts of reasons and so many things could go wrong. We finished second on the London-Sydney – we got all five 1800s to the finish. “But beaten by a bloody Hunter” was the Stokes response. We were second on the London-Mexico – a Triumph second to the Hannu Mikkola Escort; how could you compete with that?
‘The frustration was not having the freedom to do what you wanted; entries had to be approved for every event. This didn’t give you the flexibility to duck and dive. Our problem was that all the manufacturers in Europe at that time were building special homologated cars for competition. Porsche, Ford, Renault-Alpine, Lancia Delta. All these cars were coming off the line ready to win and with poor old Mini, we really had come to the end of the line, you couldn’t get anything else under the bonnet.
By 1970, British Leyland’s growing problems, coupled with the lack of future models and the Stokes antipathy towards Abingdon, meant the writing was really on the wall for ‘Comps’. Yet in the disbanding of this unique operation, BL killed off one of its few unarguable successes and surely hastened its own demise.
Thanks to Marcus Chambers, Stuart Turner and Peter Browning, and to the MG Car Club.
