Chris Humberstone: The Ghost of the Motor Show
While the Italians had their grand design houses staffed by men with expensive sunglasses and magnificent hair, Britain had Chris Humberstone. He was the king of the automotive odd-job, a one-man whirlwind of creativity who, from a series of anonymous workshops, designed everything from tiny kit cars to futuristic concept cars and bespoke monsters for the super-rich. He was a brilliant, slightly mad inventor who just happened to use cars as his medium. He was the ghost in the machine of the British car industry.
Humberstone launched his career while he was still a teenager, which gives you some idea of his ambition. His first proper car, the Scorpion Sovereign, was a handsome coupe based on a Triumph Vitesse. It was so good, in fact, that the Bond car company promptly nicked the design, restyled it slightly, and sold it as their own. A lesser man would have wept into his tea. Humberstone, barely out of his teens, sued them and won. This tells you all you need to know about his determination.
A Career of "What Ifs"
Throughout the 1970s, Humberstone haunted the London Motor Show with a series of wild and wonderful concept cars. Machines with exotic names like the Saluka and Quartetter were tantalizing glimpses of a future that never quite arrived. He was a master of the "what if," a man whose drawing board was a portal to a more exciting, and much pointier, automotive world.
He was a pragmatist too. He designed kit cars for Hillman Imp parts, and he penned bespoke luxury machines for the super-rich. For the famous London dealer H R Owen, he created the Owen Sedanca, a magnificent four-seater convertible based on a Jaguar XJS. It was a car of immense style and exclusivity. Just three were ever made, each one a rolling testament to his ability to create automotive couture.
The Glass Act: A Rolling Showcase
His most magnificent creation came from a partnership with the most unlikely of clients: the Triplex Safety Glass company. They wanted a car to show off a new type of windscreen. What Humberstone gave them was not a sensible saloon with a big window; he gave them a jaw-dropping, razor-sharp wedge called the Triplex Ten Twenty Special. He took the humble underpinnings of an Alfa Romeo Alfasud, threw away the body, and replaced it with a fibreglass spaceship.
The exterior was shocking enough, but the interior was a work of pure genius. In this tiny car, Humberstone had somehow managed to fit six seats, arranged in three, staggered rows of two. It was a packaging miracle, a piece of spatial reasoning so clever that you suspect he may have been a wizard. The car, with its bronze-tinted glass roof, was a sensation, a rolling testament to his vision and a high-water mark of 1970s concept car madness.
A Restless Spirit
Humberstone never stood still. In the 1980s, he licensed the famous Allard name and developed an ambitious, ground-effect racing car. He worked for the luxury coachbuilder Rapport. He was involved in the revival of the Spice Racing Cars team. He was a man who seemed happiest when he was working on the next, impossible project.
He died in 1999, leaving behind a legacy of incredible creativity and versatility. He was the ultimate freelance gun-for-hire, the man who could turn his hand to anything from a tiny kit car to a Le Mans prototype. He never got rich, and he never became a household name. But he spent his life doing exactly what he loved: drawing mad cars. And in the often cynical and money-obsessed world of motoring, that makes him a true, unsung hero.