Henry George Webster, CBE (27 May 1917 – 6 February 2007) was a British automotive engineer who worked on Triumph cars throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Career

Harry Webster was born in

Coventry Coventry ( or ) is a city in the West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its city status until the Middle Ages. The city is governed ...

in 1917, and educated at Welshpool County School and Coventry Technical College. He stayed in Coventry to join the Standard Motor Company in 1932 as an apprentice, spending six years in Standard's

aircraft engineering An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines. C ...

operation during the Second World War, after which he returned to the car chassis design department in Coventry. Following Standard's acquisition of the Triumph Motor Company in 1946, Webster's design and chassis engineering abilities helped to revive the Triumph marque through the 1950s. In 1957 Webster became Triumph's director of engineering, and in 1967 he was appointed chief executive engineer at Leyland Motors, which had by then acquired Standard-Triumph. In 1968, following the merger of British Motor Holdings and Leyland Motors to form British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) he succeeded Alec Issigonis as BLMC's technical director. Webster worked on Triumph's TR series of

sports car A sports car is a car designed with an emphasis on dynamic performance, such as handling, acceleration, top speed, the thrill of driving and racing capability. Sports cars originated in Europe in the early 1900s and are currently produced by ...

s, which included the TR2, TR3, TR4, and TR5 (the first British sports car to have fuel injection fitted as standard) and brought in Italian stylist Giovanni Michelotti to work with him on the TR4, Herald, Vitesse, Spitfire, 2000, and Stag. In 1974 he was appointed CBE for his contribution to the motor industry, and the same year, after resigning from BLMC he joined Leamington Spa-based brake and clutch manufacturer Automotive Products as group technical director. He retired in 1982 and lived in Kenilworth, where he had moved to in the late 1950s, until his death in 2007.

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Career

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