Gerald Palmer (car designer)

Gerald Marley Palmer (January 20, 1911 – June 23, 1999) was a British car designer.

Born in England, Palmer grew up in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where his father was chief engineer to the state run railways. He returned to England in 1927 where he started an engineering apprenticeship with Scammell, the commercial vehicle builders, and studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic. In his spare time he designed and built a sports car for the racing driver Joan Richmond and called it the Deroy after a tin mine his father owned in Mozambique. He completed the Deroy in 1936 and drove the car to the M.G. works at Abingdon where he showed it to Cecil Kimber. Kimber arranged for Palmer to be interviewed by chief engineer Vic Oak, which resulted in Palmer getting a job in the Morris drawing office at Cowley with responsibility for development of a new generation of M.G. cars. During 1937 and 1938, Palmer was responsible for leading the design of the MG Y-type which, due to the onset of hostilities, would not begin production until 1947.

With the outbreak of war in 1939, Gerald Palmer was reassigned to work on portable anaesthetic apparatus, the Oxford Vaporiser, for front line use. On completion of this he pursued development on a new two-stroke engine and production of Tiger Moth training aircraft.

Already looking beyond the war, Jowett cars of Bradford had decided it was time to move on from their basic range of cars and vans and their new managing director, Charles Reilly, placed an advertisement for a chief designer. The name of the company was not mentioned in the advertisement but at the age of 30 Palmer applied for the job. He initially had doubts when he found out who he would be working for as it meant moving from the motor industry heartlands to a small company not specially renowned for innovation. Charles Reilly must have been impressed as he pursued Palmer and in January 1942 persuaded him to accept the offer.

...
Wikipedia