In the post-war Golden Age of the MG Car Company, a period which saw the return of some degree of sports car design autonomy, there was a handful of engineers and draughtsmen whose roles were crucial, just as, in the same period, export-focused production figures rocketed. Some of these designers went on to become almost household names in the wider MG enthusiast world but, almost inevitably, some have remained little known outside a tight circle of insiders. That is obviously a shame as each and every member of the design team played an important role and the MG world owes them all a great deal. The end of April this year saw the dwindling team shrink further, with the passing of Body Draughtsman Denis Williams.
Denis was born in Oxford, on August 7th 1925, at the Nuffield Nursing Home in Museum Road. His parents, Edith and Lesley, obviously could not have foreseen any future relevance of the name of the benefactor behind the place of their son’s birth to his adult life but, as we shall see, it became very apposite a couple of decades later. Denis had a happy childhood in Oxford’s Cowley suburbs, attending Temple Cowley School from 1936 to 1939. Being keen on aircraft, the development of which was accelerating in that decade for obvious reasons, he joined the Air Cadets and was pleased to secure a job where he would be trained to support a flying school. As he told me: “In August 1939 I was due to be apprenticed to the Marshalls Flying School of Cambridge who, at that time, were responsible for the maintenance of aircraft for the University Air Squadrons, that for the Oxford Squadron being based at Kidlington.” (Much later it was the home of CSE Aviation).
