DON HAYTER, MG DESIGNER 24 JANUARY 1926 – 9 OCTOBER 2020

Don Hayter was one of the last and unquestionably the best-known member of the small team responsible for the design and development of the MGB which, for many years, held the record as the world’s best-selling sports car. Abingdon-born, Hayter grew up knowing, like most of his fellow townsfolk, of the busy little car factory on the Marcham Road. His father, who had retired from the police, took a job delivering export-destined TF Midgets in convoy towards Southampton. Meanwhile, Hayter junior attended the exclusive Abingdon School and, after a Bennett Scholarship to Pembroke College, started work in the summer of 1942 at Pressed Steel, down the road in Cowley.

“It was a five-year apprenticeship,” he once told me. “I went right through the plant, including the machine shop and laboratories – six months at a time in a work environment alternating with another six in a drawing office.” Like most industrial apprenticeships of its kind, it was a well-rounded means of learning exactly what made the whole business tick; it also brought high-pressure work on