Remembering Abergavenny's motoring maestro

ABERGAVENNY racing enthusiast and sports car manufacturer Jack Turner created a host of highly collectible and distinctive vehicles that were instant hits with such famed luminaries as swinging sixties songbird Petula Clark.

The man, whose sports cars won him a strong following, particularly in America, was born in Abergavenny in 1916.

Following an engineering apprenticeship, he secured a position with the Gloucester Aircraft Company.

During the Second World War, he helmed a large toolmaking facility which made many of the components for the first Whittle jet to fly, the Gloucester E38/98.

After the war, he became the manager of an engineering company in Wolverhampton which subcontracted work to Austin.

In 1949 he decided to go it alone, and from his newly-acquired Wolverhampton workshop, Turner carried out repairs, modifications, and complete rebuilds of his customers’ cars.

Already an MG enthusiast, Turner obtained an old MG Magnette, which he restored and raced in competitions. The car, which was described as ‘pure MG apart from its body and twin rear wheels’ became known as the ‘Turner Special’.

As the fifties dawned, motor racing and the market for specialist sports cars grew in popularity.

Taking advantage of this, Turner began to produce his first originally designed car - the Turner A30.

With a maximum speed of 80 mph, the Turner A30 sold for £674.

Before marketing, Turner ran this first car for 50,000 miles and believed, contrary to conventional wisdom, that doing miles on the public highway with its wide variety of surfaces and conditions was a better test of a car than racing.

After making a name for himself as a racing car specialist, Turner decided during 1954 to produce a simple, affordable, entry-level sports car.  

Just as Reliant had recently done with the SS1, Turner detected a gap in the market and decided to fill it with a small, economical, and practical but sporty vehicle.

Slowly but surely, Turner’s business began to establish itself, and his lightweight roadsters renowned for their excellent handling, attracted a host of famous faces who wanted to own one of these popular cars.

Petula Clark bought her first of two Turners in 1956 and her pink vehicle, bearing the registration number PET 1, featured on the back of one of her early record covers.

The late actress Susannah York was also a fan and the film star’s first ever car was a Turner Climax.

Following a run of seven years, where his name became synonymous with a cottage industry which made hundreds of highly sought after sports cars, Jack Turner decided to go into voluntary liquidation.

The surprise move was made because an American agent had damaged the company financially, and the car manufacturer’s ill-health prevented him, as both designer and businessman, from assuring the long-term future of the firm.

Consequently, one of the most promising and popular of the post-war British sports car makers went under the hammer, and its vehicles were consigned to the hands of posterity and collectors.

Turner went on to recover his health and held a variety of senior positions with major engineering firms prior to retiring to Crickhowell in the 1980s.

He passed away on March 7, 2011, aged 94.

All in all, Turner’s firm produced 670 cars over the years and the Turner Register has traced the fate of around 300 vehicles which are in various states of repair around the world.