Unsung hero
Alan Judd
XText month sees the 90th birthday of an automotive designer whose impact on our high streets and on perceptions of what it is to be British are arguably as great as those of Sir William Lyons, founder of Jaguar, and Sir Alec 1ssigonis, creator of the Morris Minor and the Mini. Every high street, that is, that witnesses the regal progress of a Rolls-Royce or Bentley.
John Blatchley's father was a businessman with artistic inclinations, his mother an RA. When he missed three years of schooling through rheumatic fever he occupied himself by drawing cars, mostly grand ones, high, with long bonnets and sweeping lines. Some of the drawings of these imaginary beauties were rather touchingly given such names as the `Blatchley Six Cylinder' or the `Blatchley Eight Tourer'. After technical design courses in London, he was taken on by the
prestigious coach-builders, GurleyNutting, where he cut his teeth on svelte open tourers for maharajas.
Denied military service during the second world war by ill-health, Blatchley was set to designing parts of aeroplanes for Rolls-Royce. When the war ended he was taken on by the car division to pretty up and finish the first post-war production Bentley, the Standard Steel Mk V1 saloon. He designed the interior and lightened the roof and window lines, later adding the longer and more elegant boot the car needed to look properly balanced. This — the R-Type or Long Boot model — was typically delayed by a senior man at the Crewe factory who found the Short Boot model, with its bottom-hinged boot lid, more convenient for stacking his son's school trunks.
From then on, John Blatchley had a significant or dominant influence on nearly every Rolls-Royce and Bentley produced during the rest of the 20th century. He shared the design of the iconic Bentley Continental R-Type, famously sketched the Silver Cloud in about ten minutes and created the 'modern' Rolls-Royce, the chassis-less Silver Shadow, in 1966. By-theby, he also knocked off the much-desired Corniche and Continental convertibles and two-door models.
Saddened by the way the company was then going, he left Rolls-Royce in 1969 and retired with his wife to Sussex. For ten years he took no interest in cars at all, but his influence continued. As he points out, one of the essentials of the Rolls-Royce and Bentley traditions is that, 'There is no such thing as a clean sheet.' Buyers want improvement and modernity but they also want to see and feel their car's genetic inheritance. Thus, the Silver Shadow begat successor models of similar appearance. culminating in the Silver Seraph, while Bentley moved in parallel through the T series and later models to the present awesome yet stylish Arnage. Even Bentley's forthcoming and radically new beauty, the GT coupe, takes some of its cabin cues from Bletchley's interiors and some of its lines from the Continental R-Type.
Bletchley's influence may also be seen in BMW's brand-new Rolls-Royce Phantom. Under the knowledgeable direction of Ian Cameron, it echoes the 1950s Silver Cloud, the model that, for many, most expresses Rolls-Royceness. BMW took drawings of their design options to Bletchley and asked him which he thought they should build. He chose their own favourite, the Phantom.
'It is a true Rolls-Royce,' he says now. 'It has dignity and its front appearance makes a big political statement, as Rolls-Royces should.' Its interior also has what was for him the essential quality of a Rolls-Royce interior, the look and feel of a 'flying drawing room'. They've even kept the saddle switches he spent so much time shaping.
But it wasn't all a seamless progression, nor was Bletchley ever an opponent of the new. For a year before the ten-minute Silver Cloud sketch he had worked on an alternative project, code-named 11B/8. This, his drawings show, was a more streamlined, rounded and modern-looking car, without the high bonnet line and imposing Rolls-Royce grille. It was a step too far for the Rolls-Royce board and Bletchley was ordered to produce an alternative, quickly. Having spent a year stretching the tradition to breaking point, he knew it from inside out, and that was partly why he could so rapidly produce the perfect Rolls-Royce for its time.
'But modern cars are so good.' he says. 'They start and stop better. They don't leak.' His only Rolls-Royce was an inherited Silver Wraith that he owned for six months, selling it on discovering the cost of new tyres. Now, he's perfectly happy with his 20-year-old Honda.
Much as he would have loved to design with the flexibility that modern manufacturing permits — decent seals and shutlines, curved window panes (flat ones were easier to stock but meant fatter doors) — he wouldn't have enjoyed the corporate complexity. He might, though, have earned more and be better known. Rolls-Royce didn't praise,' he says, 'they just accepted.'
Fortunately, longevity has enabled this modest, engaging and remarkable spry gentleman to see himself appreciated in a way that comes to many only posthumously. Not only do BMW cherish him as part of their Rolls-Royce inheritance, but the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts Club is devoting a room to his achievements. Yet surely some more public recognition is due? Rest your eye on that majestic Cloud, run your hand down the rear of that R-Type, nestle into that Corniche. Should not Sir William and Sir Alec be joined by Sir John?
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