The feature on Tony Vandervell’s Bentley S1 Continental (Last Lap of Luxury) revived happy memories of my first job after university. I joined GKN’s graduate training scheme in September 1968 and was posted to Vandervell Products the following year. This was one of the world’s largest producers of engine bearings with an annual output of around 180 million pieces, and had been acquired by GKN in 1967 following the death of Tony Vandervell. When I joined there were two factories, Park Royal and Maidenhead, where a striking characteristic was the extremely wide aisles between various production operations, designed for Tony Vandervell to be chauffeur driven in the Bentley, allowing him to see what was going on around the factory without the need for any walking!
Vandervell bearings, especially those with lead indium overlay, were regarded as the best and were favoured by premium marques and racing teams. They were fitted to Rolls-Royce/Bentley and Jaguar engines. One of my jobs was to maintain contact with major customers to forecast future demand. On one occasion I was about to leave Maidenhead in my Austin 1100 for a periodic visit to Jaguar’s Radford engine manufacturing facility when a colleague flagged me down and piled boxes of engine bearings into the boot. My contact at the other end was more interested in seeing them than me because it enabled the engine line to keep going for the rest of the day. Just-intime sourcing in the motor industry is nothing new!
Electric Classics - I am reluctant in welcoming the electric car revolution and I’ve been pondering what it might mean for all the petrol-powered classic cars in the world. Your article on the E31 8 Series powered by a Tesla motor was a welcome surprise, it shows that converting classic BMWs to electricity can be undertaken sympathetically and gives me hope for the future – perhaps classics can be given a new lease of life with electric power? I especially liked the way the charging port was hidden in the original exhaust on that car – what a great touch!
Just-in-time bearings
The feature on Tony Vandervell’s Bentley S1 Continental (Last Lap of Luxury) revived happy memories of my first job after university. I joined GKN’s graduate training scheme in September 1968 and was posted to Vandervell Products the following year. This was one of the world’s largest producers of engine bearings with an annual output of around 180 million pieces, and had been acquired by GKN in 1967 following the death of Tony Vandervell. When I joined there were two factories, Park Royal and Maidenhead, where a striking characteristic was the extremely wide aisles between various production operations, designed for Tony Vandervell to be chauffeur driven in the Bentley, allowing him to see what was going on around the factory without the need for any walking!
Vandervell bearings, especially those with lead indium overlay, were regarded as the best and were favoured by premium marques and racing teams. They were fitted to Rolls-Royce/Bentley and Jaguar engines. One of my jobs was to maintain contact with major customers to forecast future demand. On one occasion I was about to leave Maidenhead in my Austin 1100 for a periodic visit to Jaguar’s Radford engine manufacturing facility when a colleague flagged me down and piled boxes of engine bearings into the boot. My contact at the other end was more interested in seeing them than me because it enabled the engine line to keep going for the rest of the day. Just-intime sourcing in the motor industry is nothing new!
Electric Classics - I am reluctant in welcoming the electric car revolution and I’ve been pondering what it might mean for all the petrol-powered classic cars in the world. Your article on the E31 8 Series powered by a Tesla motor was a welcome surprise, it shows that converting classic BMWs to electricity can be undertaken sympathetically and gives me hope for the future – perhaps classics can be given a new lease of life with electric power? I especially liked the way the charging port was hidden in the original exhaust on that car – what a great touch!