At the beginning of the 1960s, Jack Turner felt that, although his sports cars had been successful, he needed a fallback model. At the 1962 Racing Car Show he announced the Turner Grand Touring Mk1, or Turner GT, a brand-new design using a steel inner body frame bonded to a glassfibre outer skin and powered by a 1489cc Ford 109E engine. It could be bought either in kit form or fully assembled, but in practice his sports cars were still popular and GT production took a back seat, with only 10 examples being made before the run ended in 1964.
Turner registrar Russell Filby recently heard from Frank Murphy in Canada, who has purchased the bare bones of chassis 10. It was exported new to Clois Duffie, the Turner agent in Panama, and after two owners it passed to Ted Paine, still in Panama. He changed it from right-to left-hand drive, leaving the speedometer on the wrong side, and modified the car for racing with a roll-over bar. One of his daughters drove the car daily to high school – except on race days!
In 1981 the family moved back to the USA and the car was sold to Bob Melrose, who continued to race locally, then in 1991 Bob and his family also moved north, taking the Turner GT with them to Florida. It was bought by Robert ʻBobʼ Hanna, but nothing was done to the car and by this time it had been stripped of many parts.
In 2019, with Bob in poor health, a friend offered the car for sale as a rolling chassis with no engine or transmission. It was acquired by Frank but, because of COVID-19, he was unable to bring it home to Canada until January 2022. Frank is now searching for the correct interior parts and a windscreen to restore the GT, one of only five such cars known to survive. The Turner Register (turnersportscars.co.uk) would love to hear from anyone with memories of these cars or who might own one that is not recorded.
AN AUSTIN JOURNEYS ON
Fred Woodhall bought a new Austin Heavy 12/4 on 22 July 1931. It was registered in Bradford, as KY 760, and was well used, travelling many miles around Europe. In 1961 the car passed to Fred’s son, who parked it up in 1979. The Austin then spent more than 40 years in storage, before ownership passed to Fred’s grandson, Charles Clarkson.
Richard Usher of the Great British Car Journey museum recently heard about the car and went to view it. “The garage was so overgrown with ivy th
