J. G. Parry-Thomas

Infobox Person


name = John Godfrey Parry-Thomas
birth_date = 1884
birth_place = Wrexham, Denbighshire, Wales
death_date = 1927
death_place = Pendine Sands
death_cause = Decapitation in motor-racing accident
resting_place = Byfleet, Surrey
nationality = Welsh
education = Oswestry School,
The City and Guilds College London
employer = Leyland Motors
occupation = engineer and motor-racing driver

John Godfrey Parry-Thomas (April 6 1884 – March 3 1927) was a Welsh engineer and motor-racing driver.

Parry-Thomas was born in Wrexham, Denbighshire, Wales, the son of the curate of Rhosddu. The family moved to nearby Oswestry when he was five years old and he was educated at Oswestry School. He later went on to study engineering at The City and Guilds College in London.

Leyland Motors

Parry-Thomas became chief engineer at Leyland Motors, a company whose main products were commercial vehicles. He also filed for and received a number of patents, in the fields of electrical and automotive engineering.cite web
url=http://www.parry-thomas.co.uk
title=Parry-Thomas family archive
date=updated 2008] After World War One he and his assistant Reid Railton designed the Leyland Eight luxury motor car which was intended to compete with Rolls-Royce. His experience of driving this car around Brooklands in 1920 caused him to give up his career with Leyland to become a full-time motor-racing driver and engineer.

Brooklands

In partnership with another engineer, Major Ken Thomson from New Zealand, he started "Thomas Inventions Development Co. Ltd.", based inside the Brooklands circuit itself. After his death, this company became Thomson & Taylor and went on to build such cars as Campbell's Bluebird. From 1923 he also lived there, in a bungalow name "The Hermitage". It was an ascetic life, shared only with two Alsatian dogs and his cars, in stark contrast to the hedonism of the Bentley Boys.cite book
title=The Fast Set
last=Jennings |first=Charles
isbn=0316-86190-1
publisher=Little, Brown
date=2004] Parry Thomas achieved some success on the circuit, wining thirty-eight races in five seasons and setting numerous records.

Land Speed Record

By 1925 he realised that commercial success required a higher profile than Brooklands could offer and switched his attention to the Land Speed Record. Acquiring the incomplete Higham Special from the estate of the deceased Count Zborowski, he proceeded to rebuild the car as one of the first cars dedicated to the record alone, rather than competing on the circuit. The car was powered by a huge 27-litre Liberty V-12 aero-engine. Not having either Campbell's money or prestige, or even Segrave's factory connections, Parry Thomas was unable to obtain a brand-new Napier Lion as other record contenders were planning and so was reduced to this make-do approach.

In April 1926 the car, now named "Babs", was finally complete. He celebrated by driving the lanes around Brooklands that same evening, despite his lack of headlamps.

A few days later, he was already at Pendine Sands, Wales. The same six mile beach that Campbell had used in 1924 and 1925. Despite poor conditions and soft, wet sand, on the 27th April 1926 Parry Thomas took the record, then raised it to over 170mph the next day. This record would stand for almost a year.

Death

He was killed at Pendine Sands in March 1927 while trying to regain his own world land speed record that had been broken just weeks earlier by Malcolm Campbell on the same beach. His car, "Babs", used exposed chains to connect the engine to the drive wheels while the high engine cover required him to drive with his head tilted to one side – the right. On his final run the right-hand drive chain broke at a speed of convert|170|mi/h|km/h|abbr=on, partially decapitating him.cite web
title=History of Pendine
url=http://www.sandspeedwales.co.uk/5907.html] cite web
title=Babs being recovered from the sand, showing the missing fatal drive chain
url=http://www.sandspeedwales.co.uk/mediac/400_0/media/BABS~RT.jpg
format=photograph] cite web
title=Remaining drive chain on the left-hand side
url=http://www.sandspeedwales.co.uk/mediac/400_0/media/BABS~Left.jpg
format=photograph]

Parry-Thomas was buried in Byfleet in Surrey, close to the Brooklands circuit. His car, Babs, was buried at Pendine Sands close to where he died. Some 40 years later, it was recovered and over the next 15 years restored by Owen Wyn Owen.cite web
title=Parry Thomas and Babs at Pendine Sands
url=http://www.bluebird-electric.net/parry_thomas.htm] It is now on display at the Pendine Museum of Speed, Carmarthenshire.

In popular culture

In 1980 the UK based pop group The Tea Set released a single entitled "Parry Thomas" on Waldo's records (Waldo's PS 006), which recounted Parry-Thomas's demise.

References

External links

* cite web
url=http://www.parry-thomas.co.uk
title=Parry-Thomas family archive
date=updated 2008

* cite web
url=http://www.carmarthenshire.gov.uk/index.asp?locID=2672&docID=-1
title=Pendine Museum of Speed