Old photos and stories here!

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Sales Team photos from Brian Smith 

Mr And Mrs Smith represent Leyland Trucks at Roof in Spring Ball

Leyland Trucks team offer the light fantastic at BAR (British Association of Removers) Jersey.

L 2 R. John Baldwin (?) John Ross-Bain, Brian Smith, tbi, Goef Tyler, tbi, tbi.

 Leyland Trucks Sales Team and wives at the annual Tipcon Spring Ball in Harrogate

BAR conference Jersey.

L 2 R. Brian Smith, John Baldwin?, tbi, Ray Ashworth, Goef Tyler, tbi, David Corns, tbi.

 Leyland Trucks T45 Roadtrain Cabriolet - Star of Truckfest

 Scammel Motors. A must for young boys.

 Who wouldn't want to drive a fire engine?

 My dad works for Leyland Trucks.

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Memories of Guy Motors by John Penrose
Thinking back to the formation of BMH and then BLMC and my early days in the Truck industry at Guy Motors.

It’s strange how the reunion gatherings trigger memories of old work mates whom one has not thought of for many years. At the 2017 reunion I was chatting with John Capewell (Parts Dept) and I was saying to him that I thought either he or I must be the youngest surviving employee of the old Guy Motor Company.

I had originally served an apprenticeship with Jaguar Cars in Coventry and apart from two other apprentices (Roger Cotton and Steve Gash) we were the only ones who showed any interest in the Truck (Guy Motors) and Bus (Daimler) side of the Jaguar Group of companies. I badgered our apprentice supervisor, Joe Barker, into allowing me to spend the final year of my apprenticeship working at the Guy Factory which was located at Fallings Park in Wolverhampton.

On completion of my apprenticeship I joined the Sales Department working as assistant to the Sales Manager, David Griffiths (David later joined Leyland Trucks and was responsible for Fleet Sales to the Military and Post Office amongst other fleets). At that time Jimmy Johnson had just joined Guy as Sales Director having previously been Sales Manager for ERF or Foden?? Jimmy Johnson later became MD of Guy following Arthur Jones’s retirement and battled very hard to keep production running there after the formation of BLMC. When I first worked there in 1966 the company, which had a few years earlier gone bankrupt, had only recently been purchased by Jaguar. However Sir William Lyons had put in new Directors, Arthur Jones (MD) and Cliff Elliot (Chief Engineer) replacing the Guy family. Apart from these appointments he left the new team to run the business with very little interference. Cliff Elliott and Ernest Clark designed the new Big J range which replaced the Warrior and Invincible models. Truck based buses were also introduced into the line-up. The Otter was at this time also phased out of production. I cannot remember all of the names but retained from the old company were managers such as Frank Boydon - Works Manager (who started his career at, I think, the Sunbeam Trolley bus company and clocked up 50 years’ service while I was there); Peter Woods – Purchasing; Alan Davis - Service Manager and his assistant Mick Birch; David Griffiths - UK Sales Manager; Bill Dallard – Export Sales Manager; Gordon Scott (Assistant to Bill Dallard) who handled all export shipping and later joined the Leyland Export Sales Dept; Peter Stirzaker - Contracts Manager; Ernest Clark - Assistant Chief Engineer; Phil? Parks - Chief Draughtsman.

My memory of this time was that Jaguar provided help with the press, publicity and setting up exhibitions but left the Directors to handle the day to day running of the company.

Soon after joining Guy Motors I realised that I was no longer working for a small company, as the Jaguar group of companies (Jaguar, Daimler, Guy) joined the British Motor Corporation in July 1966. BMC consisted of Austin Cars, Morris, Wolseley, Riley, MG, Austin Healey, Nuffield Tractors, Austin Commercials, Pressed Steel Fisher, and the two groups formed BMH (British Motor Holdings). From a Guy perspective this grouping made a great deal of sense as there was minimal product overlap: Volume cars – BMC; Premium Cars – Jaguar and Daimler; Vans – Austin; Light Trucks - Austin products from Bathgate; Heavy trucks - Guy; Buses – Daimler (Fleetline and Roadliner). Military Vehicles – Daimler (scout car); Agricultural Tractors - Nuffield/Austin. This grouping quickly achieved on the truck side a rationalised product range and an integrated Distributor Network.

Guy Motors, who had already achieved considerable success in the max weight artic sector, went from strength to strength becoming market leader in this rapidly growing sector (no mean achievement for a firm which had been bankrupt a few years earlier and had left a number of bad debts in the market). As the junior member of the Guy Sales team, the two people who I particularly remember from the Austin Commercial side were Pat Hanley (Uncle Pat as many of the Leyland Truck sales team will remember him, who sold vast numbers of vehicles to the bakeries as well as firms such as Lyons Maid/Findus) and Colin Christie. Colin almost single-handedly sold Austin Commercials to the Municipal Market and had developed connections with an amazing assortment of companies who would modify parts of the vehicle to meet the specialist requirements of this market long before SVS was invented!

In May 1968 BLMC was formed and what had looked like a sensible grouping suddenly became much more complicated, particularly on the Heavy Truck side where our main competitors (apart from the new “upstarts”, Volvo and Scania) were now part of the same company and the complexity of the UK Distributor network was horrendous. It became increasingly obvious that the group would have to come up with a rationalised range of manufacturing facilities, products and Distributors and Guy were unlikely to feature in this as both Leyland, AEC and Bathgate could potentially take on the manufacturing of the Guy products with their larger production facilities. Guy had not produced their own engines for a long time and the success of the Big J range was in part due to the fitment of proprietary engines: Gardner 6LX, 6LXB and a few 8LXB (although our production was rapidly rising; strict rationing on supply and no real interest in increasing production eventually contributed to the downfall of this excellent engine manufacturer); Cummins - initially the Big J range was designed to use the V6170 and V6200 engines. I think a V8 was also planned but I do not remember any production versions being built. Daimler had also designed a new coach chassis, the Roadliner which used a rear engine V6 200 installation with air or rubber suspension. These V engines never lived up to their promise and in the case of Guys they were quickly replaced with the in line 6 cylinder Cummins NH220 and NH250 engines which, although never quite matching the fuel economy of the Gardner products, quickly established an enviable reputation for longevity, particularly with fleets clocking up very high mileages on the new-fangled motorway networks. The Rolls Royce Eagle 6 cylinder engines were also offered but never managed to oust the growing popularity of the Cummins offerings.

The first product rationalisation undertaken by the new group was the Leyland Marathon which was produced at both the AEC and Guy factories and with the creation of the LAP and the new rationalised range of trucks, this was replaced with the T45 and final production ceased at Guy’s in August 1982.

In 1975 I moved up to Leyland to join Major John Cross’s Programming department; perhaps at some future date John Patterson and or Tony Pain will write about the early days of BLMC in the Sales and Marketing department.

Of the original Guy Motors employees, I think I was the first to join Leyland Trucks and David Griffiths, Gordon Scott, John Capewell and Phil Rodgers followed. From memory the Guy Regional Sales Managers were also incorporated into the factory Regional teams – David Smith (Glasgow), Norman Andrews (London), Murray Chard (SW) John Cambridge (Midlands) and Dennis Smith (NE)

So back to my original musings; it transpired that John Capewell is 2 or 3 younger than me, so it looks as if he may be the youngest surviving member of the old Guy Motors Company - or do you know someone else who lays claim to this honour?

One final aside, I have been asked many times why we use the museum for the gatherings – well, one of the reasons is so I can pay my respects to the little Guy coal lorry which now lives in the museum but which Mick Birch, Alan Davis and myself helped restore in about 1970 and then with our wives entered over the next few years both the London to Brighton truck run and also the Trans Pennine rallies from Manchester to Harrogate.

John Penrose, May 2017

This photo was taken soon after the BLMC merger when in a fit of enthusiasm we painted the coal lorry in the new corporate colours. The photo was taken outside the Service Dept workshop. Mick Birch is 2^nd from left, 4^th from left is Paul Povey (Sales) and Mrs Penrose is on the right. Photo taken just before setting off to London (on the back of a demo trailer)