Page 6 - Sample pages "Kim: A Biography of M.G. Founder Cecil Kimber" by Jon Pressnell

The Morris Garages as Sales Manager in 1921 is practically nil, other than the barest outline. He practically never talked about the past, preferring always to think about the newest M.G.,’ admitted Jean in a 1993 letter to Martinsyde historian J. M. Bruce.
Who’s Who in the Motor Trade has Kimber moving in 1917 from Sheffield-Simplex to Martinsyde Aircraft, as Stores Organiser, and thence in 1918 to Birmingham-based axle manufacturer E. G. Wrigley. The date 1918 is likely to be incorrect – 1919 is more probable – but more to the point there is no mention of AC Cars.
In contrast, Jean, writing in The Other Tack, has her father going
from Sheffield-Simplex to AC and then to Wrigley, with no mention of Martinsyde. But in the later The MG Log she revises this, having Kimber going from Sheffield-Simplex to AC and thence to Martinsyde, before joining Wrigley in 1919. This is logical, in that Kimber in joining AC would have been sticking to what interested him, in moving from one car firm to another. Having uprooted himself from the North of England to relocate to AC, he may then have preferred to stay in the Surrey area, even if it meant straying from the motor industry. This sequence does not accord, however, with Kimber’s entry in the 1939 edition of Grace’s Who’s Who in the Motor Industry, which gives his pre-M.G. history, in order, as Sheffield-Simplex, Martinsyde, AC Cars, and finally Wrigley.
Whatever the sequence, it is not known what post Kimber occupied at AC, which was then making fuses and shells; only that, according to Jean, his wife Rene worked alongside him as his secretary. Why did he spend what was evidently such a short time at AC? According to Jean, her father told her that he left an unspecified employer when he had a falling-out with the company’s stuffy management, after he had suggested ways to improve the factory’s functioning. His note had been returned with ‘What is this? See me’ scribbled across it, and Kimber had resigned on the spot, he related to his daughter.
Assuming this dispute did not take place at Sheffield-Simplex, it has to have been at either AC or Martinsyde8. Jean variously describes the people with whom Kimber fell out as being ‘two elderly owners’ and ‘two elderly brothers’. It seems unlikely, therefore, that the company was Martinsyde, as neither partner was elderly: in 1918 one would have been 37 and the other 41.
8 Helmuth Paul Martin and George Harris Handasyde had made something between 15 and 40 Martin-Handasyde aircraft before the First World War; the exact figure is not known. In 1910 the pair were the first permanent tenants at Brooklands – initially in the first aero shed. There they must have come to know Vivian Hewitt, the previous owner of Cecil Kimber’s ex-Brooklands Singer; indeed it is possible that Kimber’s employment by Martinsyde, as the business became in 1915, might have been a result of just such a connection. After the war, aircraft production wound down, and in 1920 Martinsyde began making motorcycles. The company fell into receivership and closed down in 1923.
‘Me and my Jigger!’ is the caption for this image, date unknown, of Kimber on what is probably a Sun motorcycle; surprisingly, he had gone back to a motorbike despite his earlier accident.
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Chapter Two: Cars and Planes – Learning the Trade
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