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[amerikalei]

https://www.peacocka...-panels/?au=528

 

Wasn't sure whether this had been posted anywhere.  Thought it might be relevant to Lola enthusiasts.

 

Mods, please relocate as appropriate.

[kayemod]

TWM UK Ltd was Tony Waterman Mouldings. They were based in the small village of Ellington, a few miles outside Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire. Back in the early 1970s, Tony and I were both employees of famed GRP moulding company Specialised Mouldings in Huntingdon itself, who mainly produced fibreglass bodywork for most of the UK's racing car industry. Enticed by an offer from occasional SM customer Lotus, I left in the early 70s, and I remember Tony leaving a year or so before that to emigrate to Australia. He must have returned to the UK later, and following the demise of SM and Lola, he did deals with the liquidators of both them and nearby Lola in the late 1980s or early 90s, to buy a lot of redundant GRP moulds that had been stacked untidily in the open at the rear of SM's factory in Redwongs Way. Tony got almost all of the Lola stuff, and I think he was also able to do a deal of some kind with McLaren and probably other former customers to take on a lot of their old moulds as well. I got into conversation about a couple of McLaren CanAm cars at Goodwood a few years ago, apparently these wore bodies made by TWM, and as far as I was able to see, the quality seemed to pretty much match what the original SM articles would have been, not so surprising, as Tony and others would have made both from the very same moulds. My main source of news for this was my late Father, who had been both SM and Lola's bank manager since their beginnings in Huntingdon, but Dad had retired by that time, so that source of information no longer existed. Although we saw each other daily when we worked at Specialised, Tony and I were never particularly close. He worked in the production area at one end of the complex, whereas I was always in the prototype shop at the other end, and there wasn't a great deal of daily contact between the two works areas.

 

I never had any contact with Tony or TWM after I left Lotus and moved down to the south of the UK to set up my own operation. The whole racing car business had been changed enormously by Big Money since that time, very different from the draughty sheds and shaky finance that I remember in most of the industry back in the late 1900s, strict instructions not to let customers like the perenially hard-up Frank Williams take anything away without obtaining at least a cheque. Tony must have been quite successful in his own area to have been able to continue as long as he did.

Edited by kayemod, 26 January 2024 - 18:16.