February 2, 2010
 Turner Car Company
Turner Sports Cars return to Wolverhampton - August 2005
Jack Turner established Turner Sports Cars Ltd. near Wolverhampton, England in 1954. Shortly thereafter he was joined by John Webb who served as co-director of the company & aided in the handling of finances. Webb stayed w/the company until 1960. The company closed in 1966 after the founder had a heart attack.
The development cost of a completely new coupé model w/a rear mounted Hillman Imp engine, the prototype of which was far from complete, may also have been partly responsible for the company's demise.
Jack Turner had built a series of 1-off specials & prepared racing cars from the late ‘40s even building his own engines. The 1st cars for sale were based on one of the specials & consisted of a chassis, independent suspension units using transverse leaf springs & Turner's own alloy wheels. It was up to the customer to arrange engine, transmission & body. Eight (8) are thought to have been made.
In the mid-‘50s, the company relocated to Pendeford Airport where they stayed until the companies demise in 1966. The Turner automobiles were small, economical, sports cars that were sold mostly to the U.S. & Europe. To help keep the cost low in Europe, many cars were sold as kits to evade the purchase tax.
Tho mainly built for the road, the Turner cars were often seen at the racing circuit doing battle against Lotus, MG, & Triumph.
Turner A30 & 950 Sports
Turner 950 Sports
The 1st complete car was the A30 Sports a 2-seater also known as the 803 & using an 803cc Austin A30 engine, transmission & suspension. The rack-&-pinion steering was from the Morris Minor. The car featured a simple ladder frame chassis & open fiberglass & steel 2-seater sports bodywork. As BMC would not supply components directly, they had to be purchased from dealers which increased the price of the car. The live rear axle w/telescopic shocks, torsion bars, Panhard rod, & trailing arms provided excellent handling & superior performance. Top speed was in the neighborhood of 80 mph. In 1956, the upgraded 948cc unit from the Austin A35 was adopted & the model renamed 950 Sports, but, apart from fully hydraulic brakes w/optional front discs, was otherwise unchanged. The majority were exported mainly to the U.S. & South Africa.
With the 948cc from the Austin A35, the vehicle was given the name 950. With an Alexander tuned engine w/crossflow cylinder head, the 950 that was tested by the British Motor magazine in 1960 had a top speed of 95.7 mph & could accelerate from 0-60 in 13.6 seconds. A fuel consumption of 30.0 mpg was recorded. The test car cost £1052.
Approximately 70-80 of the A30 & 170 of the A35 models were made.
Turner Sports Mk I
1960 Turner 950 Sports Mk I
The tuning firm & Turner dealer, Alexander, offered aftermarket items such as disc brakes, alloy cross-flow cylinder heads, headers, modified camshafts, & more
In 1961 a 1-off Turner GT was created by Ken MacKenzie & Mike Parkes. Parkes, a Ferrari works driver, did not have as big of a role in its creation, but he did provide valuable assistance & experience.
Tho the MKI continued the tradition of lightweight performance at an economical price, they did suffer from growing pains. After nearly 150 examples had been created, Turner introduced the Mk II, which addressed many of its predecessor's shortcomings.
Turner Sports Mk II
The following year, a Sports Mk II model appeared w/much improved interior trim & further minor styling revisions. As well as the Austin & Coventry Climax engines, in 1961 & 1962 other options such as the Ford 105E 997cc & 109E 1,340cc units were introduced & finally, in 1963, the new Ford Cortina 1,500cc engine was also made available. From 1960 the front suspension became Triumph Herald based.
About 150 Turner Mk II models were made.
Turner GT
The Turner stand at the 1962 Racing Car Show. In the foreground is the prototype Turner GT, of which just 9 were built, which shares the stand w/a Sports Mk II model.
A completely new, larger, fixed-head Turner 2+2 GT had been introduced in early 1962 at the London Racing Car Show. It had a fiberglass monocoque centre section & could, in theory, be had w/a choice of Ford or Coventry Climax engines. Only 9 of this model, all believed to be fitted w/the Ford Cortina 1,500cc engine, were produced before the model was discontinued in 1964.
Turner Sports Mk III
Turner Mk II & Mk III
The final Turner model introduced in late 1963 was the Mk III evolution of the Turner Sports & featured a tuned version of the Ford 1,500cc engine as standard. Externally, the bonnet gained a large air scoop. This model remained in production until the company went into liquidation in April 1966 when approximately 100 had been produced.
Jack Turner, like so many other small firms, was finding it difficult to run a business, raise capital, produce a quality & competitive product, & develop new prototypes. He suffered a period of ill health which accelerated the demise of the company. By 1966 the factory was forced to close its doors, cease production, & liquidate its assets. Even to the end Jack Turner continued to seek new ways of improving his product & remain in competition. His final project never made it passed the prototype stage. it was a coupe w/a rear-mounted Hillman Imp engine. In total around 700 Turner cars were produced w/around 260 in existence today.
Racing Legacy
The Turner cars have always enjoyed success on the racing circuit & excelled in competition & motor sports. In 1958 & 1959 they captured a team prize in the UK. In 1960 they won a Class Championship win in the Autosport Championship. In 1958 a Turner car won the Sam Collier Memorial Trophy race held in the U.S. They won 3 SCCA D/Production National Races in 1966. In modern times, as was true during the ‘50s & ‘60s, the Turner cars, in vintage trim, continue to success in racing.
JACK TURNER
Motor Sport Magazine
July 1985
Courtesy of Chris Burnell
Since the war there have been literally hundreds of British outfits which have tried to market specialist sports cars & almost every one of them disappeared fairly rapidly. One firm which did seem set to survive was Turner & for over a decade, Jack Turner's sports cars won a strong following, particularly in America, &, w/in the cars' limits, built up a respectable list of competition successes.
Turner was born in Abergavenny in 1916 & began a general engineering apprenticeship 15 years later. Out of his time, he worked for Gloucester Aircraft & spent the war in charge of a large tool making facility which undertook, among other things, many of the components for the 1st Whittle jet to fly, the Gloucester E38/98.
At the end of hostilities, he managed an engineering company in Wolverhampton subcontracting to Austin &, as conditions became normal again, began work on his 1st Turner Special. He'd already become an MG enthusiast, graduating from an 'M' type to 'J' & 'T' types &, around 1949, set about creating a single-seater based on the chassis & running gear of an 1100cc supercharged Magnette. This car was pure MG apart from its body & twin rear wheels but it provided Jack w/a means to sprint & hill climb & pick up a few places in class until he retired from competition in 1953.
 The "Turner Special", w/its creator at the wheel, at Shelsley Walsh in 1949. This car was in fact a re-bodied MG Magnette. Jack is at pains to point out that the helmet was borrowed!
As the ‘50s dawned, more & more people were becoming involved in the sport & special building was rife. Jack detected the need for someone to undertake machining & so on for the fraternity &, converting a stable block & smithy into a workshop, set up in business & also began work on his 1st originally-designed car.
The layout of the prototype established the pattern for his cars until 1955. It had a simple frame made from large diameter tubing arranged in a lozenge shape & front & rear suspension was by transverse leaf springs & lower wishbones. Morris Minor rack & pinion steering was used, an I4 Vauxhall Wyvern engine fitted, because it was available & the idea was 1st to prove the design by clocking up a high mileage, & the whole was clothed in an aluminum body reminiscent of the later Lotus 6. An unusual feature was the use of cast magnesium wheels w/detachable rims. John Tojeiro became a customer & these wheels were fitted to his early cars. Apart from the shape of their frame, the early cars of Turner & Tojeiro were very similar in concept, tho were made simultaneously, Tojeiro supplying enthusiasts in East Anglia, & Turner at 1st selling exclusively in the West Midlands. Drivers then often supported their friendly neighborhood constructor.
Turner ran this 1st car for 50,000 miles & believes, contrary to conventional wisdom, that miles on the public highway w/its wide variety of surfaces & conditions, is a better test of a car than racing.
Into the picture comes John Webb who, after serving in the Royal Artillery during the war, had 1st explored the possibility of sheep farming in Australia until deciding, on the death of this father & elder brother, to rejoin the family business which made English lead crystal glass. Like many others, he was still restless after the war & having become bored w/piloting private planes, sought an outlet in motor racing. He'd bought the ex-Reg Parnell MG K3 Magnette which had a unique DOHC cylinder head designed by Laurence Pomeroy. Eventually he took his car to Turner for preparation, saw the 1st Turner sports car, liked it, & deciding that his MG chassis was too heavy to do justice to his 120 bhp engine, asked Jack to build him a single-seat version. When a deal to buy an ERA engine fell thru, Webb fell back to using his Magnette engine & gearbox.
The result was a pretty little car w/which Webb took 3rd in the 1951 Manx Cup. The following year more power was obtained by 2-stage Wade supercharging. John now modestly says that he was no ace & so it's hard to assess the car but it seems to have been a competent special of its day, capable of achieving the odd decent result. Both the original engine & the chassis are in different hands & waiting for the right marriage broker to bring them together again.
Eight (8) of these Turner chassis were made. One went to Ken Rose, son of Hugh Rose, the Lea Francis designer, who fitted it with a 1½L Lea Francis engine & a Ferrari 166-style Barchetta body, made by Carbodies of Coventry, the general effect of which was undermined by a Morris Minor grille! Like John Tojeiro, Turner basically supplied a chassis & the customer specified the engine & body. One had an I6 Vauxhall Velox engine, another had a 1½L Lea Francis, one was supplied as a rolling chassis w/out an engine, the 7th chassis will be dealt w/in detail, while the 8th was merely a spare frame tho Jack believes it was later built into a complete car.
 In the manner of the day, Turner provided his customers w/chassis to which they fitted their own bodies. The 2 cars depicted above had identical chassis, but the car on the left is Turner's Vauxhall-engined prototype while the one on the right is the Lea Francis-powered version of Ken Rose.
Chassis #7 became the Turner F2 car & different from the others in that it had a 7’ 6” wheelbase (as opposed to 8’ 0”) while the 9” Girling brakes gave way to 11” drums. Webb wanted to move up a class & Turner had his eye on G/P racing which, in 1953, was run to F2 rules. Unlike today, when a driver wishing to go racing on a budget joins the queue at a production racing car manufacturer, it was then cheaper for Webb to commission a completely new car.
Apart from the shorter wheelbase, the chassis followed the general layout of the Turner sports cars but it is the eventual engine which is interesting. Thru his relationship w/Ken Rose, Jack come to know Hugh & was able to arrange for the CI Lea Francis engine to be redesigned to allow it to be cast in light alloy w/wet liners. The head featured larger valves, triple valve springs & dual ignition. Con rods were machined from Lea Francis rough forgings after an OE rod destroyed the 1st, CI-block engine & the power (145 bhp @ 6,000 rpm -- higher revs caused severe valve bounce) was transmitted thru an Armstrong gearbox w/close ratios to the chassis mounted ENV differential.
The most interesting aspect of this engine was the use of SU FI adapted from an aircraft unit & overseen by SU which, at the time, was working in conjunction w/Jaguar. This system gave very little trouble & Dick von der Becke, the engineer assigned to this guinea pig project, had little to do. Turner made 2 engines for his own use, the 1st w/a bored-out CI block, destroyed when a con rod demolished the block on the Isle of Man (marshals presented Webb w/the remains at the prize giving), & the 2nd w/an alloy block. A dozen alloy blocks were supplied to Connaught, one of the alloy heads was fitted to a CI 1,500cc Lea Francis block which was sold to Raymond Flower & found its way into a Kieft which ran at Le Mans in 1955 & I've come across odd references to others, tho Turner assures me that those authors are inaccurate.
The F2 Turner did not take racing by storm tho when Webb entered the likes of Jack Fairman & Ron Flockhart in it, it picked up a few places. In 1955, at Crystal Palace, a locked brake caused the car to slew & roll, throwing Webb out. John had had his fling, marriage was in prospect & altho his fiancee encouraged his racing John thought it best not to continue, & he bowed out of active racing tho he later served on the council of the Bugatti Owners' Club & is a member of the BRDC. The Turner F2 car is believed to exist in the Birmingham area.
 LE PATRON … John Webb, at the wheel of the Turner F2 car which he used between 1953 & 1955.
Before proceeding to the mainstream Turner sports series, we have to account for 2 other projects. The 1st was an F3 car built for Don Trueman who approached Jack having found his Marwyn to be too heavy to be competitive. Turner made a scaled-down, lightened, version of his sports chassis into the rear of which Don fitted a JAP engine. The car is still active in hill climbs.
In 1952 Jack built an interesting little 4-cylinder 500cc engine w/a view to the current F3. This had air-cooled barrels & a water-cooled DOHC head, since Turner had in the back of his mind, its application to the BMC Series "A" engine. It had a roller bearing crankshaft, "square" dimension (54x54 mm) & would reputedly rev to 12,000 rpm. Cyril Kieft, who lived locally, took an interest in this unit & announced plans to build 25 lightweight sports cars powered by it, but these plans contracted & tho John Webb was on the driver list for the 1954 Le Mans race, the engine was never used in a sports car.
Jack Turner remembers a flash reading of 80 bhp being recorded w/the engine running on an alcohol mixture when on the SU test bed. Cyril Kieft says that it never gave more than a useable 38 bhp & its reliability was dubious. Around 50 bhp was considered a good figure for a contemporary race-tuned double-knocker Norton.
 Turner’s neat little I4 500cc engine of 1952. Tho this unit proved unsuccessful in competition work, the DOHC cylinder head was fitted satisfactorily to a BMC series ‘A’ engine. Turner still has the plans should anyone be interested in a twin-cam Mini or Metro.
Three (3) engines were made, & 2 were fitted into the Kieft F3 cars of Burgoyne & Ford but neither proved competitive. The 3rd unit was retained by Turner but parts were cannibalized to assist Burgoyne whose engine, still owned by his sons, proved unreliable. Around 1964/65, Jack eased out the hemispheres of the head he retained & fitted it to a 948cc Series ‘A’ engine.
Originally the Turner engine was fitted w/4 Amal carbs which soon gave way to twin SUs. In its last form it had a double-choke Weber & apparently gave 65 bhp on the test bed & was run in a car w/out encountering problems. Some writers have claimed that work on this engine in the '60s drained the company's resources & helped to force it into liquidation in 1966 but, as we will see, that was not the case. This theory does not hold water because the cylinder head had existed for over a decade & Turner had taken on its adaptation to the Series ‘A’ motor as a little project in his spare time. That engine was sold when Turner Cars went into liquidation early in 1966 & perhaps a reader knows of its whereabouts today.
Jack Turner is a restless man & it became clear to him at the beginning of 1954 that he was not going to establish himself in racing &, besides, there was no money in it. On the other hand, as an MG enthusiast, he realized that there was no natural replacement for the Midget series. Just as Reliant has recently done w/the SS1, he detected a gap in the market & decided to fill it w/a small, economical, practical sports car. John Webb became a co-director in Turner Cars (Wolverhampton) Ltd, but tho he assisted w/capital, he remained a sleeping partner in the firm until, in 1960, he offered his shared to Jack & was bought out. The 2 men remain friends & I met Turner at John Webb's house as a 1st stage in preparing this article.
Late in 1954, the 1st Turner 803 was produced. This was built around the 30 bhp 803cc Austin A30 engine & 4-spd gearbox & used a # of other components from the car, including the front suspension (w/differently rated springs added to the double wishbones) & live rear axle, tho steering was by Morris Minor rack & pinion. A simple, but rigid, tubular chassis terminated at the back w/trailing arms & torsion bars, Girling shocks & a long Panhard rod, a layout which was to serve Turner for the next decade. Altho the 1st 6 bodies were of steel, subsequent ones were of fiberglass w/fabricated steel inner panels. Turner tried to persuade BMC to supply him w/components direct but his negotiations w/George Harriman were unfruitful & he had to buy all his parts thru a BMC agent, an arrangement which added possibly £100 to the price of the car which came onto the market at a basic £475, plus purchase tax, fully assembled. The trouble was that BMC was already planning the Austin-Healey Sprite which was aimed at the same niche of the market which Turner hoped to fill.
The new company moved from the converted smithy to fresh premises in Merridale Road, Wolverhampton, & tho initial response to the car was positive, the process of getting production under way meant that the 1st cars moved slowly. Turner arranged for the singer, Petula Clark, to be assisted in the purchase of an early example, the 1st of 2 she owned, in return for which a lot of valuable publicity was generated.
From the beginning, the market pattern was established. At home, most Turners were sold as kits (to escape purchase tax) which required a weekend's work to assemble but most fully built cars, & by far the greater proportion of all production, went to the U.S. Weighing only around 10 cwt, the 803 would do 75-80 mph, return 45 mpg &, it was generally agreed, it was a nicely made, practical, will behaved little car w/a decent boot & whose major faults, typical of a small maker, were a spartan interior & an awkward hood. Since the free world was hungry for sports cars, & the Turner had no direct rival, the car got away to an encouraging start.
Despite what you may read elsewhere about Turner production figures, a precise account is not possible because the early register was burned in 1960 when 2 amateur burglers tried to cut their way into Jack Turner's safe. Fifty (50) 803s seems to hit the mark & to this figure was added a further 150 when BMC uprated the A30 to the A35 & gave it a 948cc engine which Turner immediately adopted, the 803 becoming the 950. Apart from the engine, these cars are identical to the earlier ones, tho a few sprouted rear (rather ugly) fins after the fashion of the day. The 950 model stayed in production from 1956/59 & was soon winning a reputation on the race circuits.
In 1958, Austen Nurse's 3-car team won the Autosport Team Championship (for Production sports cars) & Peter Baldan's Turner won outright, a feat which was equaled the following year by Bob Gerard. John Bolster tested Nurse's car early in 1959 & found that, w/its tuned engine, it would accelerate 0-60 in 12.7 sec (the "norm" for the time was 15 sec) & reach 93.7 mph as opposed to the std version's 85 mph. Bolster's test contains a string of compliments for a little car which could outperform, in real terms, so many of its larger-engined rivals.
Towards the end of 1959, Turner announced the Sports Mk I, which was basically a re-styled variant of the marque tho using Triumph Herald front suspension. Further, alongside the BMC engine, at a basic price for the kit of £550, the customer had the choice of the 1,098cc Coventry Climax FWA or the 1216cc FWE variant. Additionally, the tuning firm, & Turner dealer, Alexander, offered an alloy crossflow head & special camshaft on the ‘A’ series engine, along w/front discs (otherwise std only on the Climax-engined cars) & tho the Turner-Alexanders were spoiled by an uncomfortable flat spot at 3,000 rpm, they would reach 60 mph in 13.4 sec & top 95 mph (The FWA Climax-powered cars returned 12.8 seconds & 104 mph).
In 1961, Alexander built a 1-off Turner GT which was styled by the erstwhile Ferrari works driver, Mike Parkes, & which, in the hands of Wing Commander Alexander, enjoyed a successful competition career tho the object of the exercise was publicity & a production run was never planned.
The Sports Mk I cars were still open to criticism in terms of trim & retardation &, in late 1960, the Sports Mk II was announced which overcame most objections & which came w/front discs as std & even more engine options, Ford's 997cc & 1,340cc units being available, w/the 1,500cc version added to the list 18 months later. Turner had moved away from being the producer of an Austin A30 or A35 Special & had developed a separate identity, & identity enhanced by motor racing especially by one car, "Tatty" Turner.
 Turners enjoyed their fair share of competition success. On the left is a BMC-powered 950 racing at Brands Hatch in 1956 while the car on the right is the most famous Turner of all, the Climax-powered "Tatty Turner".
This racing Turner was conceived by a dealer, Gordon Unsworth, & built by Alan Smith who also tuned the FWE engine. Driven by Pat Ferguson in 1961 (14 wins, 6 seconds & 3 thirds) & the following year by Warwick Banks, who enjoyed similar success, it was capable of beating even works Lotus Elites & both men won their class in the "Autosport" Championship in successive years. "Tatty" is still alive & well, living near Derby & is sometimes to be seen in club racing.
At the Racing Car Show of 1962, a new Turner, the pretty 2+2 GT was announced, this had a fiberglass body & monococque w/bonded steel floorpan bracing, as previously had an experimental Sport Mk I. Suspension & layout followed established practice except that the rear torsion bars became trailing arms in conjunction w/coil springs & Girling shocks. Turner conceived this car as seed corn for the future, a model ready against the day when the 2-seaters might falter in the market place, & so did not push it. It was available to order only & just 9 were built, all w/Ford 1,500cc engines tho Conventry Climax units were offered as options. Since all 9 are in existence, it suggests the cars were properly conceived.
 The Turner stand at the 1962 Racing Car Show. In the foreground is the prototype Turner GT, of which just 9 were built, which shares the stand w/a Sports Mk II model.
Most "authorities" state that this model caused a drain on Turner's resources which led to the end of the company. This is nonsense for over 3 years elapsed between its introduction & the company winding up &, in small companies, the time-scale between a wrong decision & financial difficulties tends to be much, much, shorter. It is my theory, & one w/which Jack Turner agrees, that most specialist sports car companies which enjoy success do because their original concept strikes a particular nerve & they build their success around an identifiable type. When they stray from an established line of development (as did Marcos w/the Mantis or TVR w/the Tine) the buying public becomes wary & the new concept invariably fails. Lotus is an exception to this rule because Colin Chapman was able to demonstrate thru his racing cars that he was a man capable of bold innovation which often worked so a buyer might reasonably take a chance.
Jack Turner was, in fact, working on an innovative design when he closed his business. This was to be an open 2-seater w/a fiberglass monocoque built along the general lines of the GT but using a rear-mounted Imp engine. This would have been the 1st fiberglass monocoque open sports car but it did not get beyond making the molds, which were sold when Turner Cars went into liquidation.
Late in 1963, Turner rationalized his line w/the Sports Mk III, w/detail body revisions, & which specified the 80 bhp 1,500cc Ford Cortina GT engine which propelled the car to 105 mph & gave 0-60 in 10.5 seconds, easily out-performing the contemporary MGB. These sold steadily at a rate of about 1 a week & supplied 80-100 cars to the total of around 800 Turners.
Turner decided to go into voluntary liquidation in January 1966. He'd been operating the company by himself, acting both as designer & businessman & most successful companies operate on 2 men w/complementary talents, tho Jack had foreseen this & had had talks w/both Reliant & Watsonian, the sidecar maker, w/a view to cooperative arrangements. An American agent had let him down & 6 cars had to be sold in the U.S. at a loss. The sum involved was not large but the company had always existed on something of a knife edge & the loss hurt it. Turner realized that if the long-term future was to be assured, everything needed restructuring, especially the dealer network but ill-health prevented this.
Jack went into hospital in January 1966, knowing he was going to be out of action for some time, & the closing of the outfit before it ran into real trouble, seemed to be a sensible move. Thus one of the most promising, & best liked, of post-war British sports car makers went under the hammer.
Jack recovered from his illness, went on to senior positions w/several important engineering firms &, now retired, lives in South Wales.
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