George Turnbull (businessman)

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For other people with the same name, see George Turnbull.

Sir George Henry Turnbull,

automobile executive best remembered in the UK for his period as managing director of the Austin-Morris Division of British Leyland
.

Early life

The son of a works manager at the Coventry-based Standard Motor Company,[1] George Turnbull left his grammar school at the age of just 14 to take up a six-year automobile engineering design apprenticeship with Standard.[1] It was the company that sponsored his engineering course at Birmingham University from which he obtained his first degree.[1] He married in 1950 and fathered three children.

Career

Between 1950 and 1951 he held a post as personal assistant to the Technical Director of the

Midlands
-based UK motor industry consolidated itself into what became the British Leyland Motor Corporation, late in 1968).

On his promotion to the board of the newly formed British Leyland in 1968 he was, at 41, the youngest member of the board.[1] His time as managing director of the Austin-Morris division ran from 1968 to 1973 and is remembered as a period during which the company reaped the harvest from a decade of insufficient investment in product development and production technology, crowned by increasingly troubled industrial relations.[citation needed] Product launches during Turnbull's time included the Morris Marina. He resigned five months after his competitor (John Barber) to replace Donald Stokes as head of BL was appointed deputy chairman.[3]

In 1974

coupé. They used the Marinas as a base to develop the Hyundai Pony. In 1975, the Pony, the first Korean car, was released, with styling by Giorgio Giugiaro of ItalDesign. It was sold in three door hatchback, four door fastback saloon, five door estate and pick-up variants, kick-starting the company's ascendancy in car manufacturing.[7]
Turnbull was soon appointed vice-president and director of the Hyundai Motor Company.

Turnbull's three-year contract with Hyundai expired towards the end of 1977 triggering speculation of a possible return to a position of power and responsibility with the by now nationalised and ever more troubled

Iran National, then assembling passenger cars based on the British Hillman Hunter. Turnbull's mandate was to increase domestic sourcing of components and in the longer term to foster the development of a home-based auto-industry in Iran.[8]

In 1979 he returned to the British motor industry as chairman of

Talbot UK, formerly the Rootes Group and latterly Chrysler UK, by then a subsidiary of Peugeot. He had the unenviable task in 1981 of shutting the company's Linwood, Renfrewshire plant where the Hillman Imp had been made. Remaining with Peugeot until 1984, he served as president of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders from 1982 to 1984, when he joined the Inchcape investment company becoming chairman and chief executive in 1986 and retiring in 1991. One of the companies in the Inchcape group was the UK importer of Toyota
cars and Turnbull played a significant part in persuading the Japanese manufacturer to build a factory in the UK.

He was knighted in 1990.

Family

His brother, John Bartholomew Joseph Turnbull, was also an automobile design engineer. [citation needed]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "From what I gather ...". Autocar. 128. Vol. (nbr 3775). 20 June 1968. p. 21.
  2. Motor
    . nbr. Vol. 3581. 20 February 1971. pp. 15–18.
  3. ^ ""Obituary: Sir George Turnbull"". The Independent. 24 December 1992. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
  4. ^ About us, Hyundai UK
  5. ^ The Times 4 July 1974
  6. ^ The Engineer. 30 January 1975
  7. ^ https://www.hyundai.news/eu/articles/press-releases/over-50-years-of-progress-the-history-of-hyundai.html
  8. ^ a b "News: Turnbull: Korea to Iran". Autocar. 147. Vol. (nbr 4221). 1 October 1977. p. 16.

External links

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