Bettering the Bug-Eye: The delightfully charming Turner Mk II

Jack Turner admitted to having dreamt away much of World War II waiting for it to end while sketching designs for lightweight sports cars.  

Jack had a penchant for the MG J2, and thought, “Cor, I miss those things!” Meaning, of course, the cheap and cheerful little British roadsters that introduced oh-so-many to the joys and delights of sports car motoring. The under one-liter sports car class was, after all, wholly vacant.

It all came Jack’s way when he set up Turner Sports Cars Ltd. in “The Smithy,” a former blacksmith’s shop in Wolverhampton, to build them. 

His template was simple: An inexpensive two-seat sports car would be built of components sourced from the Austin Motor Company and placed onto a bespoke tube-frame of Turner’s own design. A lightweight fiberglass body, a mass-production industry first, would cover it all and incorporate a unique rear suspension which included transverse torsion bars with trailing arms to the rear axle assembly, tubular shocks and a Panhard rod. Weight would be pared to a skimpy 1200 lbs. 

So successful was this rear suspension that ol’ Jack used it in three successive generations of production sports cars - 670 in all - built between March 1955 and April 1966. 

Handling was, then, superb, which explains why so many were raced, and why the Turner quickly caught on. British pop star Petula Clark (“Downtown”) owned two of them in succession.

The Smithy started with a workforce of six, ultimately numbering as many as 25 by the time increased production forced a move to larger digs at nearby Pendeford Aerodrome. 

When Austin caught on to Turner’s early success, though, it wanted some of the action for itself and developed a competitor of its own: The Austin-Healey Bugeye Sprite debuted and, by either coincidence or design, Austin's wholesale-priced supplies of engines, steering mechanisms, brakes, gearboxes, and other goodies from the factory dried up. 

Jack persevered using other outsourced components until ill health forced him to shutter the bucolic works in 1966.

I think I would have liked Jack Turner.