London-born Harris William Mann began his design career at Duple, the commercial vehicle coachworks, but spent a brief period in the USA working for the Loewy design studio. He returned home when there was aworked at Commer and joined Ford in 1962 – at an exciting time, as the new Cortina was on the stocks. He worked closely with Ford UK’s Chief Designer Roy Haynes, and soon followed his mentor to BMC in 1967, as part of a new design team recruited to reinvigorate the staid BMC portfolio. Haynes had bright ideas but in the aftermath of the British Leyland merger, he fell out with Lord Stokes and his appointed Austin Morris design chief, Harry Webster, a Triumph man who had a dim view of what he viewed as ‘stylists above their station’. Haynes left, having started what became the Morris Marina, but Harris Mann and a number of fellow ex-Ford acolytes stayed on and contributed to a new generation of Austin Morris products, such as the Allegro, Princess and the TR7, for which he is probably most famous. Of course in a busy design studio, there was a great deal more work, much of it destined never to see production, such as a new Mini (ADO74) and a proposed replacement for the Marina (ADO77). When the British Leyland ‘Mighty Mini’ (ADO88) was subjected to a crash-redesign to create the LC8 Austin Metro, it was again Harris Mann who was at the forefront. His design for the new LC10 Maestro was rejected in favour of one by Solihull designer Ian Beech, and tired of the new politics, he left and pursued contract work elsewhere, working on more general product design as well as cars and motorbikes. However he was back at the old firm again upon the formation of MG Rover Group, working closely with Peter Stevens on the MG ‘Z’ cars (ZR, ZS and ZT) as well as the MG XPower SV. His wife Anne predeceased him; he has three children.
