Page 7 - Sample pages "Kim: A Biography of M.G. Founder Cecil Kimber" by Jon Pressnell
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A Sheffield-Simplex open tourer at Hendon aerodrome, c.1913. (Nostalgic Picture Library)
Over at AC, John Weller would also have been 41 but his backer John Portwine, however, would have been a rather older 52 and might have seemed an old man to the 30-year-old Kimber; further to this, the talk of brothers may refer to some combination or other of the various Weller brothers. Jean told J. M. Bruce that she was inclined to put her money on AC Cars, but her hunch cannot be confirmed.
Kimber’s spell at Martinsyde – spanning the two years 1917 and 1918 according to his entry in Who’s Who in the Motor Trade – would have seen him working at either the company’s Brooklands factory or its large facility in nearby Woking. Said to be Britain’s third-largest aircraft manufacturer in the First World War, Martinsyde made several different planes, but was best-known for its G100 and related G102. A big and lumbering bi-plane,
51 Chapter Two: Cars and Planes – Learning the Trade
