Tom Lush
I did not come across Tom Lush until 1950 when the S1 workshop staff (Sydney’s workshop!) took over the build of the Cadillac powered J2 which Sydney and Tom Cole finished 3rd at that year’s Le Mans. S1 is the name given to this workshop which was in the basement of the AMC Head Office. As an apprentice who had help build the car I was not over impressed to see it being taken apart for it’s preparation for the race. The connection between the works and S1 was fairly distant, as it needed to be. Tom joined the Company at it’s inception in 1945 and was Sydney’s right hand man in the early days of the company. He was instrumental in setting up the Park Hill workshop / factory. In today’s jargon he was Sydney’s competition manger, which was almost a full time job. Tom was responsible for answering Allard technical queries along with AOC matters and kept what was the Allard archives – large number of photographs of any Allard related subject. Tom was part of the Monte Carlo winning crew in 1952, and was navigator/second driver with Sydney in the 1950 Tour of Sicily, 1951 Mille Miglia, plus numerous other International and National events. Tom was unfortunate to damage, beyond repair, a brand new light weight Cadillac J2 while being delivered to Scotland – I suspect if it had not been for Sydney’s loyalty to Tom he would have been sacked! As the years went by Tom had a reduced work load, until he was part of the mobile sales team for Shorrock Superchargers conversions, Webasto roofs and the Ford tuning equipment produced by the company – this he did not enjoy! Towards the end of my time with the company (1965) Tom was very disgruntled and missed his close involvement with Sydney. After Sydney’s death and the subsequent demise of the Company, Tom retired. However he retained his Allard links and wrote ‘Allard – The Inside Story’ which was first published in 1977 and has been very much the ‘Allard Bible’. Tom continued to act as historian for the company well into the 90’s. He visited America on numerous occasions, meeting Allard owners and providing them with an insight into the Company.
Ted Cutting
Early in his career he had been employed by KLG and in 1942 developed a new type of plug for the American Air Force. He then joined the Royal Navy. On leaving the Navy he worked on refrigeration plants and in 1947 secured an interview with The Allard Motor Company to take on the role of a draughtsman. It was not until I saw the obituary for a Ted Cutting in 2012 that I realized my brief talk with one of the Allard draughtsmen, back in 1949, was actually with Ted. The obituary listed his time with Allard as a draughtsman before he joined Aston Martin. Our discussion over some drawings were of the Allard angled pivot axle beam, plus other front suspension parts. I was shortly due to spend my six months doing my draughtsman training and looked forward to the experience. However, by the time I started the nameless draughtsman had left to work, supposedly for a refrigerating design company.
It was Ted’s obituary in March 2012 that listed his Allard connections. I had already read Tom Lush’s 1977 book, ‘Allard – the Inside Story’ however there was no reference to Ted.
The Lush book is very accurate in detail and is accepted as the ‘Allard Bible’, but of Ted’s employment 1948/9 – nothing. By chance published in 2012, was an autobiography called ‘Cutting Edge Conversations’, which provides details of Ted’s time with Allards.
He worked on many different designs for Sydney and later produced the car shown. I believe this was the first J2, 888 and was built in a garage at the rear of S1 workshop. Ted left The Allard Motor Company in the early Spring of 1949 to go to Aston Martin, because the salary had an increase of 10 Shillings a week (50 pence for you younger members). He went on to design the famous Aston Martin DBR 1.
