Edward the Great and his point and squirt twins

Edward the Great and his point and squirt twins
by Rocky

Edward William Turner was born on 24 January, 1901. He had a rather disjointed early education due to frequent family moves resulting in his attendance at many different schools. Like two of his sisters, he showed a talent for drawing and art and later attended the Slade School of Art. During WWI, at age 16, he joined the merchant navy as a telegraph operator and rose to the rank of senior officer. He enjoyed the rough, tough life at sea and being in command so much that he didn't resign his commission until 1920.

At loose ends for the first time in his life Edward sought a career on the stage using his fine baritone voice, but as only a few roles came his way, he decided that engineering was his real vocation. He trained as a fitter and turner and took a job as the manager of a small engineering company while also studying engineering at night school. That job didn't last and he went to work for his father. He was placed at the bottom of the ladder under his brothers both in station and salary. Not being able to withstand the humiliation as an underling Turner struck out on his own by investing his entire wartime gratuity in Chepstow Motors - a Velocette motorcycle agency and a small business buying, selling and repairing second-hand light cars and motorcycles.

Young Edward continued to concentrate on his drawing and design talent which resulted in the design of an overhead camshaft engine. This was followed in 1928 by a revised engine design and a complete machine, the Turner Special. Unable to secure a financial backer, the project died. During this time fate stepped in when Edith Webley, an attractive young lady who wanted to buy a motorcycle, entered his shop. Being very knowledgeable about them, she made quite an impression on the young bachelor. Edward was smitten and they developed a close friendship which led to love and marriage in 1929.

With no prospects that his Special would ever be produced, and now with a wife to support, Turner put his business up for sale and began making the rounds of the Birmingham motorcycle manufacturers with his portfolio of drawings. Ariel Motors owner, Jack Sangster, was not interested in the Turner Special, but was impressed with the sketches of a four-cylinder engine arranged like two twins back to back. He hired 28 year-old Turner and placed him in the drawing and design office under Valentine "Val" Page with Bert Hopwood as his assistant. It was there he refined the Square Four engine and experimented with other designs. Turner and Hopwood were to play a major part in shaping British motorcycle design for over four decades.

By 1936 the ambitious Turner had advanced as far as he could within the Ariel organization and was looking for a new challenge. The Great Depression had forced the Triumph Company Limited into serious financial trouble and they were about to close their motorcycle works. Having rescued Ariel Motors from bankruptcy, Turner convinced Jack Sangster to also buy the Triumph motorcycle works and put him in charge. Sangster bought the business at a bargain price and installed 35 year-old Turner as chief designer and general manager of the new Triumph Engineering Company Ltd.

Chapter upon chapter has been written about Turner the tyrant and Turner the moody, razor tongued, intolerant autocrat. Bert Hopwood, in his book, What Ever Happened to the British Motorcycle Industry, was quite scathing in his assessment of Turner, declaring him to be, by far, the most opinionated, egotistical and self-absorbed man he had ever met. Hopwood worked for Turner for many years and to question or suggest that one of Turner's designs should be modified in any way was taken as a direct insult and was met with a tirade if invective from the great man. If any of the staff used mathematics or science to point out design weaknesses their suggestions were dismissed as "no-nothing academics".

Far less has been written about Turner the charmer; the natty dresser; the sailor and motorcyclist. He loved sailboats, fine cars and tailored light-weight American suits. He was an avid motorcyclist in his youth, but now as GM of Triumph, he generally only rode motorcycles from the factory floor or on special factory outings.

Being the charmer was often his role - especially with the Americans upon whom he depended for most of his export sales. Turner enjoyed the annual business tours of that country to meet distributors, lecture dealers and rub shoulders with business leaders and Hollywood film stars. With his natty attire, British accent, quick wit and old world manners, he was a sought after and popular dinner guest among the California elite. Somehow, with the blessing of Jack Sangster, Turner negotiated a contract clause that allowed him to spend six months of each year in the United States. It is a tribute to middle management that the Triumph Company prospered and ran so well during these lengthy absences since no deputy GM was appointed to fill his chair.

Turner’s wife had died in a tragic car crash along with three of her friends in 1939. In his grief, and with no children to share his life, he threw himself into his work. Following WWII Turner traveled extensively throughout the Americas and the British Empire on business. It was on one of his business trips to New Zealand in 1952 that 51 year-old Edward met and married Miss Shirley Watts, an Australian lady 30 years his junior. They had three children, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1965. Edward was a workaholic and the age difference proved to be an obstacle they couldn't overcome. Alone most of the time at her country estate, and with very little social life for a woman her age, Shirley could no longer endure the mundane existence forced upon her.

Following his appointment as GM of Triumph by Jack Sangster, Edward Turner set to work updating the existing single cylinder range, moving on to launch the Speed Twin in late 1937. Its acceleration and top speed relegated most 500 singles to second best. But some motorcyclists are never satisfied. Give them a new model and immediately they want more power. Turner obliged and developed the Tiger 100. His policy was to first design and market a touring model and then follow with a sports version.

Much has been written about Turner's drawing ability and eye for design and it would seem that he raised Triumph to great heights all by himself - which couldn't be farther from the truth. His traveling and GM obligations prevented him from devoting the time to detailed drawings, therefore, the task fell to his personal assistant, Jack Wickes, head of the design department, and it was he who developed the flowing lines of the classic Triumph profile. For example, it was Wickes who designed the famous Triumph headlight nacelle introduced in 1949. Turner often turned over crude drawings of his ideas and it was up to Wickes to turn them into a pleasing design for approval of the great man. Turner often introduced Wickes as "my pencil", not exactly an endearing term, but Wickes was a man of such great tolerance and humor that he put up with Turner's tirades, bad temper and compulsive behavior for decades.

On the night of 14 Nov. 1940 the Germans bombed the city of Coventry destroying most of the factories producing war materials. The Triumph works was hit hard and it was a supreme effort to salvage what they did. They set up shop in a temporary building while the British government built a new factory for them in Meriden.

In spite of a very long and close working relationship between Turner and Sangster they often locked horns. The most serious clash was over the location of the new factory. Sangster wanted it to be on the old Coventry site while Turner wanted it to be in Meriden. He reckoned the city would be bombed again (it was) and on his own authority Turner approved construction at the Meriden site.

In 1941 Sangster fired Turner for his in-subordination, but BSA (Birmingham Small Arms) quickly hired him and his design career continued. When Sangster learned of the motorcycle and engine designs Turner was producing for BSA he realized what a grave error he had made by handing ET over to the competition. He rehired Turner in 1943 as General Manager - on Edwards' own terms. It was another coup for Edward the Great.

Truth be told, Turner was unhappy at BSA in a middle management position with little power, and was happy to be out of there and once again in complete control of Triumph. He immediately, and optimistically, started work on post-war designs. At the end of the war, and with a new factory, Triumph was soon producing Speed Twins, Tiger 100's and a new 350cc, well ahead of the competition.

The Forties and Fifties were great years for Triumph, but the cry for more power continued and Meriden responded with the launch the 649cc Thunderbird (a name from Native American lore) in 1949 as a 1950 model. It offered extra performance and easily topped 100 mph at a cost of £10.00 more than a T100 with only a modest increase in weight. The Americans loved it and the new Thunderbird easily blew off Harley's and Indian's in any test of performance and handling.

But the cry was for still more power and Triumph responded with the Tiger 110 in 1954. It was an instant hit and would eventually lead to the high performance T120 Bonneville in 1959. As the demand for the T110 and more power grew it gained an alloy cylinder head in 1956, and in 1957 the T100 was offered with a splayed inlet cylinder head followed by the T110 in 1958. The T120 Bonneville with twin carburetors was the ultimate Triumph developing 46 bhp - more than enough for 110 mph.

All this performance multiplied the wobbles and weaves of the early single down tube frames which were replaced by a duplex frame, followed by a large diameter single down tube in 1963, the first year for the unit construction 650.

In 1956 Turner was given a seat on the BSA Board of Directors which lead to his designs for the Daimler automobile - then a part of BSA. He designed the SP250 2.5 litre sports car and a V8 for the saloon car which showed another side of his considerable talent.

Edward Turner was quite concerned about the growing popularity of the motorcycles coming out of Japan and decided to see for himself how the Japanese produced and marketed their machines. He was given a cordial tour of their factories in 1960 and was shaken by the sheer scale of their production figures. Japan was producing 500,000 machines annually compared to 140,000 in the UK. Honda alone produced more machines per day than the entire British motorcycle industry could produce in a week.

Although Turner warned of the threat from Japan, both he and the other British GM's dismissed the notion that Japan was capable of producing a large capacity machine to rival their 650cc twins. They arrogantly concluded that while new motorcyclists might learn to ride on the smaller Japanese machines, and be happy with them for a while, when the time came to move up to a larger machine they would naturally choose the superior British products. Their arrogance would prove to be fateful for the British motorcycle industry.

Stricken with diabetes, Turner retired on 1 January 1964, but stayed on as a director of BSA. He still loved the sea and spent many a summer day sailing his 45ft ketch, Charane, which had been built in 1960 to his own design. He also formed a design company, ET Developments, and prototyped a dohc 350 twin engine which later formed the basis for the aborted BSA Fury/Triumph Bandit.

In the six years since he visited Japan, Turner had noted the increase in size and quality of their machines - and their ever increasing popularity with motorcyclists in the UK and around the world. He admitted that his twin engine designs were more than a decade out of date and it was time for a giant leap ahead with a four-cylinder engine as a challenge to an inevitable Japanese large capacity machine - and it had to be done now! Over at BSA, Bert Hopwood also saw the threat and new designs were on the drawing boards, but he was unable to sway his Board of Directors from their head-in-the-sand attitudes. When BSA finally came under the control of a chairman with some business sense, it was too late.

Turner used his reputation and influence to make presentations to UK and U.S. industrial giants (including Harley-Davidson), but could not get sponsorship for his new designs. Had the new designs of Turner and Hopwood been accepted and implemented immediately there might have been a chance to save their industry - but it's all hindsight now. The 1969 Honda CB750 4-cylinder would prove them right. This machine was so advanced and packed with features that the British were completely outclassed and left years behind in development.

Turner retired from the BSA Board of Directors in 1967, and following his divorce, spent a few years in the Bahamas. In 1971, with his eyesight failing due to the diabetes, he returned to England for good. On 15 Aug. 1973, at age 72, Edward William Turner passed away in his sleep from a coronary thrombosis. He had been by far the most colorful and powerful character in the British motorcycle industry.

The Sixties were the boom years for Triumph both in sales and racing. The new Triumph management team quickly endorsed and supported factory racing and other speed events. A Triumph 500 won the Daytona 200 in 1966 and 1967. The new T100R twin-carb Daytona was an instant hit and the twin-carb T120 Bonneville was arguably the king of the streets for that decade assuring its legendary status.

However, by the end of the decade the British motorcycle industry was progressively collapsing under the burden of financial difficulties created by its own mismanagement; lack of foresight;

dated designs; aging factories and machine tools, and the shift in market demand towards the more advanced and cheaper machines coming out of Japan. Popular marquees such as AJS, Matchless and Ariel had already gone under, followed by Velocette in 1971. Even once mighty BSA was on the skids and only clung to life until 1973. Norton managed to hold on until 1978 and Triumph, in various forms, until 1983 - the year that John Bloor bought the rights to the Triumph name.

In 1984 the Meriden factory was demolished and the property turned into a housing development. The only clues to its existence are two streets named Daytona Road and Bonneville Close.

But the dawn of a new era for the Triumph name was on the horizon in the skillful hands of John Bloor.