Stuart Peck – Automobile Designer and Triumph Draftsman

A little known architect of the Standard Triumph Company in the fifties and sixties was Stuart Peck. Post war most of his career was spent at Mulliners the famous coach builders in Birningham, England. Stuart’s first major job was to produce a full size drawing for the Triumph 1800 razor-edged saloon that would eventually be sold as the Renown.

The car was already in production but the original tubular chassis was being replaced with a modified Standard Vanguard chassis-hence the need for a new drawing. In 1951 Stuart designed what named out to be the last one-off body built by Mulliners other than prototypes for Standard-Triumph. It was built on a Bentley chassis which Rolls-Royce presented to Sir John Black of Standard Triumph.

Recalls Stuart, “I was given a completely free hand and when I took the colored drawings over to Sir John he just said, “Yes, that looks great”so I put the full size drawings and supervised the building of the car which we delivered in the Spring of 1952.”

However soon after that Sir John was kicked out by his own directors and Alick Dick took over at Standard-Triumph. Just prior to this Sir John had indicated a desire to produce a competitor for the Jaguar XK 120 and that led to work started on the TR2 in 1952.

As Stuart recalls: Colonel White who later became managing director of Mulliners came into my drawing office one day and said: “Look Peck, I want you to go over to Coventry and talk to Walter Begrove and Leslie Ireland because they are planning a 100 mph sports car.” It all sounded very exciting and when I went over, they already had the drawings of what became the TR2 and I brought those back to Mulliners to build the prototype.

“We weren’t very keen on the bob-tailed rear, but after the Earl’s Court show debut, Sir John rang Mulliners and asked us to design a new rear end. We took it on from there and did all the engineering for the T.R. range and I was put in charge of the T.R. Sports car section of the drawing office, becoming Chief Draftsman in 1956.

In the 1958 Standard Triumph took over Mulliners and by the time of the TR4, Harry Webster had become technical director. It was he who brought in Michelotti to style the Vanguard Vignale and the Triumph Herald. Stuart traveled to Italy to see Michelotti several times and got to know him well.

“When Michelotti was busy with the TR4,” recalls Stuart,” he came to my office with a pile of drawings and spreading them all out said, ‘I’ve been asked to design a typically English sports car, but I’m Italian so you must tell me what an English sports car should look like.’ He had obviously been working on it for some time. Many of his sketches were typical Italian things, but I pointed out one design that caught my eye, which was whiny striking distance of what became the TR4.”

As project engineer for the TR4, Stuart was handed Michelotti’s final sketches. And using these he put up the first full-sized drawings and set to work on the body engineering and the building of the prototypes.

In 1962 while Stuart was still busy with the TR4, Leyland took over Standard Triumph. One the day the TR4 was announced, Stuart (along with 80 other managers) was told his services were no longer required. Stuart remembers: “So it was good-bye to my Mulliners staff and everything else…they just cleared everybody out.”

Later in the days of the Hillman Imp, Hunger and Avenger, Stuart was a senior project engineer for both Pressed Steeel and Rootes at Linwood and ended up as resident engineer of Chrysler UK. until the Peugeot Takeover.

Still retaining his lifelong fascination with automobiles, this remarkable gentleman is now the archivist of the Institute of British Carriage and Automobile Manufacturers (IBCAM). A full-circle move, for it was in 1937 that Stuart produced an IBCAM medal winning design for a Sunbeam Straight Eight limousine and received his medal in London at the magnificent Coachmakers Hall – quite an experience for a lad!

by Barney Sharratt, “Classic Car Weekly”