The Club regrets to report that Associate Member Stuart Turner sadly died on Monday 8 September. Although he was much more associated with rallying rather than racing, such was Stuart’s exceptional contribution to the British motor sport scene that in 1972 he was invited to become an Associate Member of the BRDC, a gesture which he very much appreciated and which led him to take a keen interest in the Club’s affairs thereafter. Stuart was the epitome of the motor sport club competitor in the 1950s. After two years’ National Service he obtained employment as an audit clerk with a view to training to become a chartered accountant. However, a fairly casual invitation to participate in a road rally whetted his appetite for more and he soon became a member of the flourishing North Staffordshire Motor Club. As such, his talent for communication soon surfaced and he started a club magazine, The Potter’s Wheel, the quality and contents of which soon began to receive considerable acclaim in national motor club circles. Stuart’s skills as a rally co-driver, which in the 1950s required the ability to read Ordnance Survey maps in the dark while hurtling through narrow country lanes, made him a much sought-after rally navigator.
A partnership with local motor trader Ron Gouldbourn in the latter’s Triumph TR2 was rewarded with a first BTRDA Gold Star in 1957, Stuart also winning the Autosport Rally Navigators’ Trophy in 1957, ’58 and ’59. The Gouldbourn/Turner double act won the first RAC Rally Championship in 1958 whilst in 1959 Stuart was again the winning co-driver, this time with the mercurial John Sprinzel in the latter’s Austin-Healey Sprite. John and Stuart also took time out to compete in the Liege-Rome-Liege Marathon, run from one side of Europe to the other for some 92 hours non-stop. They finished 12th overall and won their class from 97 starters and 14 finishers.
As a sideline to his day job of training to be an accountant, in addition to his numerous rallies as a navigator Stuart had been submitting rally reports to Autosport and Motoring News which led in mid-1960 to an offer of full-time employment as Sports Editor of the latter which was still establishing itself as a motor sports newspaper and shedding its association with the likes of Patrolman Fred. Before the year was out Stuart had been invited by SAAB to co-drive for its superstar driver Eric Carlsson on the 1960 RAC Rally, an experience which left Stuart wide-eyed both at the time and when recounting the experience in years to come. The amazing skill of the big Swede in the little Swedish car, with Stuart squeezed in alongside, prevailed in a field of 172 starters and they won the event outright. At Motoring News Stuart increased the coverage of rallying, instigated the Motoring News Rally Championship and started the keenly-followed ‘Verglas’ column. He also undertook road tests for Motor Sport magazine, becoming notorious for commenting that the Austin-Healey Sprite, despite its merits, was ‘not a good courting car’. This generated massive correspondence over the ensuing weeks in the pages of MN’s parent magazine.
Stuart had been with MN for barely 12 months when he was offered the role of Competitions Manager at the British Motor Corporation in succession to Marcus Chambers who was heading for pastures new after establishing one of the most highly regarded international manufacturers’ competition departments. One of the problems with which Marcus Chambers had had to contend was the wide variety of cars which BMC manufactured and wished to promote through motor sport. Stuart’s arrival coincided with the emergence of the Mini-Cooper which quickly evolved into the Mini-Cooper S, initially with a 1071 cc A-series engine and followed by the ‘homologation special’ 970 S and the 1275 S. The Austin-Healey 3000 was retained for a while for events which suited larger sports cars compared with little saloon cars. Another feature of Stuart’s time at BMC was his choice of drivers. Having witnessed at first-hand what one Scandinavian in the person of Eric Carlsson was capable of, Stuart invited the Flying Finns Rauno Aaltonen and Timo Makinen to join the BMC team alongside British drivers Paddy Hopkirk and Tony Fall. Mini-Cooper Ss won the Monte Carlo Rally on three occasions, for the first time in 1964 thanks to Paddy Hopkirk and Henry Liddon. There should have been a fourth win in 1966 but for the organisers disqualifying the Mini-Coopers for an alleged headlight infringement. There were also wins in the Alpine Rally, Acropolis Rally, the 1000 Lakes Rally, the Circuit of Ireland and the Tulip Rally to name just some of the successes. Stuart showed his flair for publicity when he arranged for Paddy’s 1964 Monte-winning Mini-Cooper S to be flown back to London immediately after the event to appear live on stage on ITV’s prime time Sunday Night at the London Palladium.
At the end of 1967 Stuart joined Burmah-Castrol to become, after a short probationary period, Publicity Manage with initial responsibility for the launch of Castrol’s new brand GTX. All manner of initiatives involving motor clubs were conjured up from Stuart’s imagination including roadshows. Stuart was a member of the organising committee of the London-Sydney Marathon which included trips to places such as Afghanistan and the Australian outback. When Ford’s Walter Hayes saw how much Stuart was enjoying being back at the coalface of masterminding competitive events with his involvement in the London-Sydney, he made an offer which Stuart did not feel able to refuse and so he moved to the Blue Oval to become Competitions Manager, initially based at Boreham. Essentially, he was in charge of all Ford of Britain’s racing and rallying activity outside Formula 1.
Just as Stuart had managed a very successful competitions department at BMC so he did with Ford. From Competitions Manager he moved to become Manager of AVO (Advanced Vehicle Operations) followed by Director of Public Relations for Ford of Britain and ultimately Director of Motorsport for Ford of Europe. In his period in charge, Stuart led the planning for Ford’s participation in the 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally which was won by the Ford Escort of Hannu Mikkola and Gunnar Palm with other factory Fords finishing third, fifth, sixth and eighth. Another example of Stuart’s flair for publicity was the invitation to Jimmy Greaves, England’s leading goal scorer of the time, to share a car with Tony Fall. Those who said this was just a publicity gimmick had to eat their words when Tony and Jimmy finished the very gruelling event in sixth place overall. Competition cars which emanated from Stuart included the ultra successful Sierra Cosworth RS500, the Escort RS Cosworth and the RS200.
Stuart retired from Ford at the end of 1990 but whatever thoughts he might have had about a more relaxed lifestyle were scarcely fulfilled. For many years he had been very much sought after as an after-dinner speaker, an activity which he clearly enjoyed. In 1988, and therefore shortly before his retirement from his day job with Ford, he won the Benedictine After Dinner Speaker of the Year Award and found himself on the receiving end of even more invitations. So much so that he was making some 80 speeches a year divided between conventional motor club events on the one hand and business management topics on the other. It seems not all that long ago that he was the highly entertaining guest speaker at the BRDC Christmas Lunch in the Clubhouse. In his spare time, such as it existed, from his work with BMC, Castrol and Ford over the years he had written a number of usefully informative and witty books on such diverse topics as renovating old cottages, getting started in motor sport, how to win, guides to public speaking, rallying (of course), a Haynes Manual on Retirement, a biography of Pat Moss entitled Harnessing Horsepower and his own autobiography Twice Lucky. He became involved in the making of a DVD for the Motor Sport Safety Fund of which he was a trustee. In earlier years he had been on the committee of the Springfield Boys Club in London’s East End. Having owned over the years Austin-Healey Sprites, XK120 and XK140 Jaguars but never a Mini-Cooper S, Stuart acquired a Dellow with which he enjoyed himself in his retirement on classic car events. In recent times Stuart had been in declining health and withdrew from involvement in public occasions. Having emerged from the British motor club scene of the 1950s, Stuart was a great believer in the grass roots of motor sport and putting back a contribution based on his own experiences. Just as much as the names of Timo Makinen, Paddy Hopkirk, Roger Clark and Hannu Mikkola, the name of Stuart Turner will be forever linked with the multiple successes of BMC and its Mini-Cooper Ss in the 1960s and the Ford Escorts of the 1970s.
To Stuart’s daughters Nicola and Sarah, and their families, the BRDC offers its most sincere condolences. In accordance with Stuart’s wishes, there will not be a funeral. However, his daughters would like to arrange a memorial or celebration of life event in due course. Members will be informed of these arrangements via the BRDC Newsletter when they are known.