MiniWorld July 2019 91
I went back to Cowley and worked to
the end of my apprenticeship at the
BMC Complaints Department.”
Richard’s apprenticeship at BMC
put him in good stead for his next
move. “I then got a job at the legendary
Downton Engineering, in Salisbury,
as Sales Manager, which was really a
good name for dogsbody! I spent a year
there and it was interesting as Bunty
Richmond, who ran the place, was not
tight, she was ridiculously tight. Daniel
Richmond, who was the bo n, was
Issigonis’ right-hand man. Alec Issigonis
used to come down quite regularly, on
a monthly basis. They went fi shing in
the day and talked at night in The Bull
pub in Downton, with Champagne and
salmon. I met Issigonis three or four
times and he was alright but he was in
the clouds, as was Daniel Richmond.”
Richard didn’t stay there long as he
and Vera’s next move was to Germany.
“I got a job in Hamburg at DL Wooding,
BMC main dealers for Northern Germany.
I ran their Mk2 Cooper S racing team
and imported accessories from England.
We’re talking about Astrali, John Rhodes
equipment, Minilite wheels, Britax seat
belts and Duckhams oil and others. In
fact John Rhodes drove for us twice at the
Nürburgring.” The couple were married
in 1970. “Both our children were born in
Hamburg. Our daughter Juliet came fi rst
and our son Jonny came a bit later on.”
The worldwide oil crisis in 1973 caused
the company to close and the couple
moved back to England as Richard
explains: “I got a job with Serck Services,
a national radiator repair company. We
moved to a village just outside Ipswich
so that’s why we came to Su olk. One
day a rep brought us a tatty digger seat
and he asked ‘can you fi x that?’ I said: ‘We
don’t do seats, we do radiators.’ The new
customer threatened to take the business
to our rivals. His business was worth
about £10,000 a quarter, which was a lot
of money then. It was literally a square
seat with a bit of vinyl on top. I charged
around Su olk looking for a trimmer but
couldn’t fi nd anybody so I went home to
Vera, and in the middle of tea, I said: ‘If
I buy a yard of material can you sew the
edges up?’ She said ‘Yeah, no problem.’”
“It just looked like a simple thing to
do,” recalls Vera, “so I did the work. And
then, three or four days later, he came
back with 12 more so we did those and
then it really took o . Not only were we
doing just squabs, we were doing seats in
aeroplanes, in police cars, milk fl oats, coal
lorries, more or less anything that moved
and had wheels we could do seats for.”
Richard adds: “The thing was that
Vera was working three nights a week
as a sta nurse. We would put the kids to »
Richard in Germany.Richard managed a Mini
Cooper S racing team for
DL Wooding in Germany.Vera gave up her
nusing career to
start a family
business.Richard in the workshop
at Abingdon during
his apprenticeship.