A holiday job in 1961 led to my joining the Rover Company, Solihull in 1965 as a Noise and Vibration Research Engineer.
In 1961 I had worked on prototype number 9 of what became the Rover 2000 - one of the best cars ever made. In that long hot summer we would ride the lanes of Warwickshire recording the noise made by the car. Then, on rainy days, we would stay in the lab analysing the tapes. Less fortunate colleagues had another prototype on a test rig, subjecting it to vibration at different frequencies. Each prototype had cost about £20,000 to build, and the facilities for their eventual bulk manufacture around £10 million. So it was a major project for the company. The target price was to be £1000, but it eventually came out - slightly late - at £1200.
By the time I returned in 1965 the Rover 2000 was a huge success, and the company wanted to build on that. They had been approached by General Motors, seeking to buy an obsolete diesel engine from them. Instead Rover proposed an exchange: for an obsolete 3.5 litre V-8 aluminium petrol engine of theirs.
My first job was to determine the moments of inertia of this new engine about three axes: pitch, yaw and roll. This I did by hanging the engine from a roof girder on two wires and oscillating it - very grandly called bifilar suspension! I understand from former colleagues that they never did this again with any subsequent engine. I wonder why!!
The last project I was given was to 'shine' noise on a car body panel and measure how much got through to the other side. The plan was to apply different sound deadening materials to the interior side and discover which was the most effective.
Being of a lazy disposition I decided to automate this process and, in so doing, burnt out the rather expensive loudspeakers which had been purchased to 'shine' the noise. This happened on a Friday afternoon.
The following Monday morning I was promoted - and put in charge of the department that had to repair the loudspeakers! In this way I obtained my only promotion after a mere 12 months as an industrial researcher. So I became the Electronics Research Group Leader - a job I held until December 1967, when I left the company.
Although called an Electronics Group really our work was instrumentation and, after my time, it was re-named more appropriately. The team were much better at electronics than I, so I felt that my contribution lay in other directions: using my knowledge of physics to determine what were the best transducers for turning what needed to be measured into an electrical signal - after that my colleagues could do the rest; and putting the department's organisation on a sounder footing - my first, and not always happy, experience of management.
By the time I left 21 months later the Research Department was working on putting that same V-8 engine into Land Rovers - the forerunner of what became in 1970 the highly successful Range Rover which was launched at £2000!
In 1966 the Company, previously independent, had been taken over by Leyland Motor Corporation. Thus started a chain of events that culminated with the sale of the Land Rover marque - a fascinating success story - to Ford. The car marque was engulfed by lesser mortals, its nadir being German ownership. That didn't last and the whole, sorry, car story ended in tears in 2004.
The Wilks family must be spinning in their graves.
Rover Research Section March, 1966
Back row (L to R): Ron Pearson, Jack Anderson, Tony Bates, Terry Harding, David Mather, Eric Branson, Eric Hughes, Peter Stubbs, John Parry, Finlay Wallace.
Middle row (L to R): ?, Brian Smith, Chris Baptiste, Bob Gough, Alan ?, Ian Duncan, Nikolai ?, Joseph Lehel, Phil Webb, Jim Perkins, Bob Chapman, Roger Mills, Derek Mascall, Ken Wood, David Lloyd, ?.
Front row (L to R): Bert -?, George Tiney, Frank Stewart,Ted Simmons, Bob Morgan, Ray Horton, Malcolm Peers, Basil George, Lyn Thomas, Brian Silvester, Kath Sutton, Mike Lewis, Frank Varker, Ron Woodward, Richard Fishwick.This picture had been taken at the request of the Chief Research Engineer, Brian Silvester, shortly before he left the company after 18 years' service.