People

Len Terry

A graduate of the highly-competitive 750 Motor Club world Len Terry joined rivals Maurice Philippe and Brian Hart and built a Formula Junior car in the mid 1950s called the Delta. This was followed by another Formula Junior called the Moorland before Terry began to build Terrier Clubman cars in 1958. These were driven successfully by Brian Hart and were followed by Terrier Formula Juniors in 1960. At the same time Terry was building a Gilby sportscar and in 1960 he was commissioned by Sid Green to build a Gilby F1 car and then Terry joined Team Lotus developing the Lotus 25 into the Lotus 33 which was used by Jim Clark to win the World Championship in 1965. The same year Lotus won the Indianpolis 500 and in 1966 Terry was hired by Dan Gurney to design an Eagle chassis which would serve for both Formula 1 and Indycar racing.

In 1967 Terry moved on to BRM and designed the P126 but this was not a great success. In 1969 Terry designed a Formula 2 car for BMW but the programme received a huge setback when Gerhard Mitter was killed and BMW decided not to pursue the project. At the same time Terry was designing a Formula 5000 car for Leda and when this project faltered John Surtees took it over and the car was renamed the TS5. The cars were raced in Britain and America with David Hobbs finishing runner-up in the United States, despite only doing half the series with wins at Donnybrooke, St Jovite, Thompson and Sebring. Italian Andrea de Adamich also raced the cars in America and Europe, where Trevor Taylor also drove one of the Chevrolet-engined devices. Thereafter Terry slipped out of the limelight although he was involved in the Viking Formula 3 project of 1975. In 1977 he made a brief comeback with the BRM P207 but this was not a success.

After retiring from the sport Terry became a dedicated cyclist covering tens of thousands of miles to keep himself amused.