{"id":1048135,"date":"2022-05-25T05:56:49","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T04:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/?post_type=issue_content&p=1048135"},"modified":"2023-07-11T17:37:14","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T16:37:14","slug":"the-colourful-career-of-john-piper-from-metro-6r4-to-land-speed-records","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/july-2022\/123\/the-colourful-career-of-john-piper-from-metro-6r4-to-land-speed-records\/","title":{"rendered":"The genius designer behind the Metro 6R4 and Jaguar XJR-14"},"content":{"rendered":"
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He\u2019s spent more than 40 years living at motor sport\u2019s cutting edge. So why would such a man, now on the cusp of his eighth decade, even think about starting again with a bright and ambitious new business? \u201cIt\u2019s just what I do,\u201d says designer, ex-mechanic, artisan engineer and artist John Piper. \u201cIt\u2019s what I\u2019ve always done.<\/p>\n

I guess I\u2019m at that age where lots of people use the \u2018R\u2019 word. I\u2019m 69, 70 in August. But I\u2019ll quote Carroll Shelby: \u2018I\u2019ll retire when the work\u2019s done.\u2019 This is simply who I am and I don\u2019t feel I\u2019ve done it all yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Piper\u2019s colourful racing life is an unplanned tapestry that\u2019s brought him a great deal of pleasure and significant achievement: formative years at Williams and Benetton; a key role in the creation of legendary competition cars such as the Metro 6R4 and Jaguar XJR-14; breaking convention with the insane-looking Panoz GTR-1; heading to Bonneville to set diesel-powered speed records that might stand forever, especially now that fuel source is considered a global pariah. He\u2019s done a bit of everything and now, under the auspices of Piper Special Vehicles, he enjoys electro-modding classic cars, including his next big thing: a production armada of battery-powered Austin-Healey Frogeye Sprites.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve headed to Bristol to meet Piper in his small industrial unit that was once home to Aardman Animations, creator of Wallace and Gromit. That seems fitting. Piper has something of the cheese-loving inventor about him and is brimming with boyish enthusiasm for his new project. There\u2019s no sign of an intelligent hound to play the grown-up and keep him grounded\u2026 Still, he has engineer son Alex on CAD design duties and a small band of experienced technicians to steer him clear of the car equivalent of \u2018The Wrong Trousers\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/p>\n

Piper Special Vehicles\u2019 latest work sits on the shop floor and is representative of John\u2019s world these past few years: a beguiling new-old MGC GTS replica, which is very much not electric: it\u2019s propelled by a good old burbling V8. More of that, plus a wealth of racing stories, to come. But first, John, what\u2019s this about sparky Sprites?<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the 1990s there was a company based on the Isle of Wight that made Frogeyes,\u201d Piper explains. \u201cThey did it very well, so much so that Geoff Healey, son of founder Donald, allowed them to use the Healey name. Birkin, who make replica Lotus 7s, took the project to South Africa, and Birkin\u2019s owner John Watson, whose son Stephen was a test driver for Arrows in F1 and whom I knew through motor racing, ended up selling it to me and Darryl Eales, my investor in Piper Special Vehicles. All the moulds, tooling and drawings, we brought them back in two containers just before Covid struck. As I sent everyone home and put them on furlough, I got some funding through an Innovate UK grant for a feasibility study and it\u2019s been very well received by the Niche Vehicle Network.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Patrick Head taught me to design. I was a good draughtsman, but didn\u2019t know my arse from my elbow”<\/blockquote>\n

Armed with inspiration from Simon Saunders and his Ariel Atoms, Piper is setting up to make \u201ca modern electric version of the Frogeye Sprite. It will have a glassfibre body \u2013 we\u2019re looking at organic and sustainable fibres and resins \u2013 on a tubular chassis with twin wishbone suspension front and rear. The electric motor and gearbox will offer about 100bhp, and with a 350V battery it should give us in excess of 120 miles in range. The car will be sub-800kg and our targets are sub-eight seconds for 0-60mph and 100mph on top speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has the funding to build three prototypes this year, and is searching for more to commit to a production run of 120 cars built over a three-year period. A move to a bigger facility at Silverstone is likely on the cards too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe essence of Piper Special Vehicles is to use all of my background and experience of high-quality engineering in an artisan way,\u201d says John. \u201cI have this idea in my head of what it\u2019s going to feel like when I drive it. Do you remember the first time you drove a car or rode a motorbike? Wow. You were immediately sucked in. I want you to feel that with this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everything, it seems, has led him to this point. Life begins at 70? John Piper might say so \u2013 although the rest of it hasn\u2019t exactly been shabby. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever consciously made a career decision,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve just followed my heart. Throughout my motor racing career I didn\u2019t do it because I was a racer, I did it because I loved the engineering. The freedom of that industry led me down this path.\u201d<\/p>\n

Price of an education<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Wind back half a century and it\u2019s clear Piper fell into his life in cars. Having earned a degree in engineering from Kingston Polytechnic, John worked for a precision machine tool manufacturer, and through the 750 Motor Club built a Ford 100E special for trials competitions and began working as a mechanic for a Formula Ford racer on spare weekends. Then he spotted an ad for a job as a full-time mechanic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was David Price Racing and the Unipart Formula 3 team based in Twickenham,\u201d he reveals. \u201cThe drivers were Tiff Needell and Ian Taylor, and I was Ian\u2019s mechanic. I absolutely loved it. Then they got the deal to run Giacomo Agostini in a Williams FW06 [in the Aurora-backed British F1 series] and also the deal to run Triplex Rover SD1s in 1980, so I moved from F3 to become chief mechanic on the Rovers with Jeff Allam and Rex Greenslade. A young Nigel Mansell joined the Unipart F3 team too. I was his mechanic for three races.\u201d<\/p>\n

He credits future McLaren chief mechanic Ian Dyer for teaching him the trade, before a Saturday morning visit to Williams to pick up some spares sparked a career he\u2019d never considered. \u201cThe workshop manager said I should talk to Patrick Head because they were looking for a junior draughtsman. So I phoned Patrick, went for an interview and got the job. There were four of us in the office: Patrick, Frank Dernie, me and Neil Oatley. Patrick was fantastic and taught me to design. I was a good draughtsman, but didn\u2019t know my arse from my elbow. The reason Patrick employed me I think was because of my time with the precision engineering tooling company. I\u2019m forever grateful to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The cars that John Piper created<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"Metro<\/p>\n

Rolling into the Metro 6R4<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Head took Piper in another direction when the F1 team\u2019s Leyland sponsorship helped trigger a Williams special project: the Metro 6R4 Group B rally car.<\/p>\n

In a cabin behind the team\u2019s base in Didcot, Piper found himself reunited with fellow Kingston Poly graduate Brian O\u2019Rourke, who arrived at Williams from US aerospace company Northrop expecting to work on the team\u2019s first carbon-fibre F1 chassis.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Austin Rover motor sport boss] John Davenport said he wanted a V8 engine in the front,\u201d chuckles Piper. \u201cPatrick and I looked at that and thought, OK, but only if you cut the driver\u2019s legs off. Patrick said try it in the back [the four-wheel-drive Metro ended up with a shorter six-cylinder from which its name derives]. I drew the transmission, mechanicals and suspension with help from Bob Farley, a fantastic guy who was seconded from Austin Rover. Brian did the steel shell, having come from doing carbon-fibre air brakes for F-111s at Northrop! Ian Anderson and Derek Jones from Williams built it. We had a great time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \"Metro\n
\n

The 1986 RAC Rally was a 6-7-8-9 for the Metro 6R4; this is Jimmy McRae in the mud<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

Piper then found himself responsible for \u201cputting miles\u201d on the car at Chalgrove airfield, where a ride with new Rover British Saloon Car Championship recruit Steve Soper proved memorable. \u201cIt had been raining, so I asked Steve if he wanted us to sweep the puddles away. \u2018No, I\u2019ll drive around them.\u2019 As we\u2019d done one circuit he just brushed the edge of a puddle and suddenly we were spinning, on road tyres. We slid off, laughing \u2013 but there was a hole and a wheel dropped into it, breaking the upright and flipping us. He\u2019d won the Metro Challenge, had only just signed his Rover contract and that morning had picked up his new Vitesse road car. \u2018Steve, I think you should drive the Vitesse back to Cowley. Post the keys through the door and do a runner.\u2019 He didn\u2019t really appreciate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the testing was carried out by BL mainstay Tony Pond. \u201cPatrick had been going on that the first rally car to use aerodynamics would win,\u201d recalls Piper. \u201cNo one paid much attention. We were going to test at Oulton Park and Patrick said to Brian, \u2018Go up into the stores and find a wing. You\u2019ll need to put some kind of splitter bib on the front to balance it. Set a time. Then put those on to see what Tony says.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cA main-plane was ridiculous. It was too big, so we found a little counter-flap, made a couple of angled aluminium endplates and riveted them to the tailgate, then made an aluminium strip bib splitter. When we got them out Tony laughed. \u2018Are you serious?\u2019 We put them on and he went about a second and half a lap quicker. He said they look ridiculous. So shall we take them off? \u2018No, no, no\u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n \"Rear\n
\n

Williams was a demanding posting for John Piper in the mid-1980s, although it meant he could work again with former F3 driver Nigel Mansell<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

F1: Reunited with Mansell at Williams, then on to Benetton<\/h3>\n

Back in Formula 1, Piper worked on the gearbox and rear-end of the 1985 FW10, while O\u2019Rourke finally got to produce the composite chassis he\u2019d been employed for. Under team manager Peter Collins, John found himself race engineering his old F3 driver Nigel Mansell, who had joined Williams that year from Lotus.<\/p>\n

\"Nigel\u201cIt\u2019s quite competitive being a race engineer at Williams and I did feel a bit alone, plus I had a brand-new family,\u201d says John. \u201cIt felt very strange going away and leaving my young son behind. I got an offer to go to Benetton, so I only did up to Spa with Nigel \u2013 then he won the next two races, the bugger!<\/p>\n

\u201cNigel was just like he\u2019d been in F3: what you see is what you get. Fantastically exciting in qualifying. He still blames me for not getting pole in Monaco because we finished with too much fuel, although it wasn\u2019t quite like that. We had discussed it and put in enough for an extra lap, but that was discreetly forgotten when he missed it by 0.086sec [to Ayrton Senna].\u201d<\/p>\n

Piper spent three happy years at Benetton, working under Rory Byrne and Pat Symonds on gearboxes. \u201cWitney was like F1 as a cottage industry and I made a lot of friends,\u201d he says. \u201cEveryone worked really hard until 9pm, then went to the pub with Rory to play table tennis or bar billiards. He\u2019d be back in at 7am. It was a very nice time.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n \"Jaguar\n
\n

Piper co-designed the XJR-14, which kicked up a storm in the 1991 World Sportscar Championship<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

Jaguar: a purple reign<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Piper\u2019s gearbox expertise led him to Prodrive, but his spell in Banbury was short-lived. \u201cOne day the phone rang and it was Ross Brawn, who I\u2019d first met at Williams. \u2018What are you doing?\u2019 I was looking out of the window at the rain. \u2018Do you want to come and win the World Sportscar Championship?\u2019 Yeah, that sounds really good. Again, there was no career plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Piper was hired to run Tom Walkinshaw Racing\u2019s design office under technical director Brawn as plans fermented to create one of the most celebrated sports Prototypes: the Cosworth HB-powered Jaguar XJR-14. \u201cI absolutely loved it in Kidlington and found Tom a fantastic guy to work for,\u201d says Piper. \u201cHe had an extremely loyal workforce who had been with him for years. I know his reputation was colourful, but the people who worked for him adored him. If you wanted something and could make a case for it, you got it.<\/p>\n

\n \"Jaguar\n
\n

Martin Brundle on his way to a win at Le Mans \u201990 in the XJR-12 LM<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

\u201cThere were 10 of us in the design office, which was unheard of in a Group C team, and I was in charge of the day-to-day running, although they called me the chief designer. I oversaw the design of the gearbox.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe XJR-14 was a fabulous car and it was so great to be a part of that. We also did the upgrade to the XJR-12 [the XJR-12D] to make it last at Le Mans, and it did better than that \u2013 it won in 1990. I went to TWR in the autumn of 1989, we won Le Mans in 1990 and then the World Sportscar Championship in 1991. I had a three-year contract but then Jaguar pulled out. Crikey, what do you need to do to keep your job?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Panoz<\/p>\n

Panoz: do as the Don says<\/h3>\n

In another break with reputation, Walkinshaw paid the rest of Piper\u2019s contract when Jaguar pulled the plug, leaving him free to take a sabbatical and indulge another passion. His wife, Ruth Piper, is a respected artist and now John too found he had the time to express himself in a wholly different way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did some sculpture, some ceramics and had a lovely time. Tom sent Andy Morrison round to ask if I\u2019d do the Volvo British Touring Car and I did make a career decision then: I turned it down because my heart wouldn\u2019t have been in it. But then the money started to dwindle and I thought, \u2018I\u2019ve either got to sell the house and commit to this new way of life or\u2026\u2019 Ruth and I were having an exhibition in a Chelsea gallery and I got a call from Adrian Reynard asking what I was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That call came on a Thursday. By the Monday, he was on a plane to Detroit to create the Ford Indigo concept car that celebrated the Blue Oval\u2019s Indy 500 success with Reynard and Jacques Villeneuve in 1995. On the back of that, Adrian recruited Piper as technical director of his new Reynard special vehicle division. John designed a lowered gearbox for Reynard\u2019s BTCC Ford Mondeo, but it was a Le Mans-related campaign that tickled his creative funny bone: the way-out Panoz GTR-1.<\/p>\n

\n \"Ford\n
\n

The Esperante had a Ford V8 at the front. Piper was told that the GTR-1, top<\/em> would also be front-engined<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

\u201cNigel Stroud, who is lovely to work with, was on board for the aerodynamics, and he and I went to see Don Panoz in the States,\u201d Piper recalls. \u201cDon said, \u2018There\u2019s only one thing I\u2019m going to insist on: the engine has to be in the front.\u2019 Don, the cars that win are all mid-engined. \u2018I don\u2019t care.\u2019 His son Donny was building a car based on a Mustang platform [the Esperante] and if the racing car was going to be a Panoz flagship it had to have the engine in the same position as Donny\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cNigel and I were crestfallen and came back on the plane drawing ideas on serviettes. We thought, if we take the gearbox off the engine and put it in the back we can hang all the suspension off it, like a proper racing car. The engine up front can go against the front bulkhead of a carbon-fibre monocoque, which kind of becomes a spacer between the engine and gearbox. Nigel worked the aerodynamics around that and actually they weren\u2019t bad, although it was an odd shape. He had to put the radiators in the front rather than the side to get the aero he was looking for.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoush did the Ford engine and their background in V8s is second to none, but not in an efficiency formula. They could get lots of horsepower and make it strong, but Le Mans is all about not using fuel and they found that a challenge. The other big problem I had was getting the carbon-fibre propshafts to last. We broke a lot, but got there in the end. We also did a version of the car that had electric storage.\u201d Electrification? Sounds familiar.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n \"Andy\n
\n

JCB Dieselmax crew<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

Going straight with JCB<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Burnt out at Reynard, John quit and set up Piper Design. A string of projects followed: a car commission from Noel Edmonds for a stillborn TV show; an LMP1 Le Mans car that never left the drawing board; work for Suzuki, Rolls-Royce and MG; an aerodynamic efficiency project for Marks & Spencer trucks; and a novel sandwich van that put the company behind it out of business \u2013 and took Piper Design with it.<\/p>\n

At a low ebb, he and Ruth prepared to sell their Fulham apartment when, once again, the phone rang. \u201cIt was Brian Horner of a company called Visioneering in Coventry. He had a bit of design work on a diesel-powered land speed record car for JCB. Would I be interested? No career decision\u2026 It rescued me from depression.\u201d<\/p>\n

The JCB Dieselmax remains close to Piper\u2019s heart. Powered by two JCB444 turbo-diesel engines, the pencil-slim four-wheel-drive machine headed out to the Bonneville Salt Flats in 2006, ultimately setting a new diesel land speed record of 350.092mph with Thrust SSC king Andy Green at the controls.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe designed the car in five months, built and tested it,\u201d says Piper. \u201cI was chief designer. It\u2019s the best project I\u2019ve ever done \u2013 well, until the Sprite. The timescale was the biggest challenge. No one gave me a budget, so we really went for it. The wooden hangar we used in Bonneville was where Breedlove, Campbell and the rest had their cars. There was a Baptist chapel next door and we arrived one morning to find it had burnt to the ground. The fire fighters had been there all night hosing the hangar to make sure it didn\u2019t catch fire, and the car was inside\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did 350mph, but we were limited by what the tyres would do. We had a great tyre engineer from Goodyear and had developed a tyre using a machine that was used for the Space Shuttle to get to 450mph. We were going back. JCB\u2019s Tim Leverton told me to get the team together again \u2013 and then the economic crash [of 2008] happened and JCB laid off 900 workers. The data showed we could have done 395mph.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \"Bloodhound\n
\n

Bloodhound LSR aimed to break the land speed record that has stood since 1997<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

Piper relocated to Bristol and worked on Richard Noble\u2019s Bloodhound LSR project for two and a half years. \u201cRichard couldn\u2019t get enough money to do it in the way I wanted, and I couldn\u2019t do it his way. We parted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Piper Special Vehicles has kept him busy since, and now the Sprite will give him his umpteenth new lease of life. \u201cThis is the most personal project I\u2019ve ever done,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m so passionate about it \u2013 I hope you can feel that.\u201d We can.<\/p>\n

After all he\u2019s been through, Piper has unwavering faith: the key chapter of his remarkable life might still lie ahead.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"author":747,"featured_media":1048175,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[124748,121828,129232],"tags":[36292,127168],"issue_decade":[122153],"issue_year":[129434],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/1048135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1048135"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/1048135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1355344,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/1048135\/revisions\/1355344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1048175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1048135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1048135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1048135"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=1048135"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=1048135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}