Chairman of the Board .

[Matt Spencer]

A bit peripheral , but the Chiefs endevours previous to two wheeled considerations are of some note .
Would you mess with someone who drove This . 8)

http://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/dodgerestoration.htm

Included this one as the R D Poore Motor raceing winged horse could be used on your racing Norton . :wink:

Dennis Poore came from a military family, with links to the Scottish aristocracy, that controled the ship propeller manufacturers Manganese Bronze, he was a British Hillclimb Champion in 1950 and also funded the launch of motor sport magazine Autosport. He was briefly involved in the Connaught team and raced two Grands Prix for the team, his best result being a 4th place finish at the 1952 British GP. He later raced successfully in the Aston Martin sports car team, sold off the propeller business and tried in vain to save Britain’s motorcycle industry by buying Associated Motorcycles, the company which owned Norton, AJS and Matchless, also acquiring Villiers, Triumph and BSA. With the motorbike business having failed, Manganese Bronze developed a car component division, which Dennis ran until his death in 1987.

Born: 19th of August 1916 in London. UK.
Died: 12th of February 1987 in Kensington, UK, aged 70.

 

[wakeup]

Poore tends to get a bad press, some of it may be justified, but much isn't. Without him there would have been no Commando, and therefore no JPN racers, no AJS Stormers and so on.
I only ever met him once, just after I started at Andover. He was driving a specially built Merc. 300 or 350 bodyshell, powder blue, with 6 spoke alloy wheels, the tyres were very wide by the standards of the day, maybe 10", the cast wheels were also powder blue. The story went that he knew Alfred Neubauer the former head of the Mercedes GP effort. In the late 60s Neubauer was in charge of development at Merc. Poore asked him, through the "old boys" network to build him (Poore) a special car. It had a specially tweaked 6.0+ litre V8 from the Merc "Grosswagen" limo. We had to go from the Andover site to the Thruxton site, a trip of about 8 or 10 miles. I used to travel the same route ever day as I was in digs in Thruxton village. The journey involved a very fast left hand sweep, about 400 or 500 yards after leaving the 30mph speed limit. On my T100 if there was no traffic about, we used to hit about 100mph on the exit of the bend. In Poores' car with 5 people on board, with me as the junior sitting in the middle in the back seat, I lost sight of the speedo needle when it went over about 90 mph. I lost sight of the needle going into the bend, and realised that looking straight ahead I was looking at the field on the inside of the bend. Dennis Poore with three of his senior designers and me, on board had this thing in a four wheel drift. Spectacular I thought. Others may disagree.
cheers
wakeup

 

[frankdamp]

Being "out in left field" as the baseball saying goes, I don't think Mr. Poore visited Marston Road while I was there. Certainly, I owed my interesting time at N-V to him having rescued the various companies and formed N-V. Unfortunately, his expertise and drive were sadly not anywhere to be seen in the disorganised mess that N-V was.

I'm glad to have had the experience of working on the Commando and Stormer programs, but it was at significant expense, since we moved to the Wolverhampton area from Kenilworth and had to sell a house and buy another one. On £1250 a year salary, that wasn't easy.

I'm now retired, 14 years after a 30-year career with Boeing and living in a place where my sister reckons "God goes on his holidays".

 

[xbacksideslider]

Good stuff guys. Love that over steering four wheel drift story Wakeup.