Excerpted from
TWO WHEELS TO THE TOP by REG HARRIS with Gregory Houston Bowden
1976 W.H. Allen &
Co. London
ISBN 0 491 01957 2
Taken from Chapter 9,
"A New Way of Life"
"It did feel very strange for a while
to have ceased to be a professional racing cyclist, but at least I was still in the cycle
business. I have always been a very active sort of person and so I found that I did not
really have enough to keep me occupied. Moreover, I had grown used to, a certain standard
of living which my income from racing easily provided, while my retirement pay was down by
two-thirds from that figure. After about a yearof this new life, I arranged to see George
Wilson (Director of Raleigh, who employed Reg at that time..ed.) again and asked if
I could possibly have a lot more money and a little more work. He was very sympathetic
about this and came up with an idea which could have made my request a reality: that Raleigh should produce a range of Reg Harris bicycles
and that I should be directly involved with all aspects of its design and marketing."
I was very happy about this and for several months we worked
on the scheme.Space was found for this new division of Raleigh in the old Sturmey-Archer
gear shop, and I travelled all over Europe examining different kinds of specialised cycle
components and getting inspiration for designs, colour schemes and so on. Unfortunately,
just as we were getting close to making the scheme a reality, Raleigh merged with Tube
Investments and a new policy was adopted which caused the
Reg Harris cycle division to be dropped. The new group de-cided that it
was already suffering from having too many different brand names, and that far from
wishing to add another one to thelist, it would gradually aim to make Raleigh its only
brand namethroughout the world.
Naturally I was very disappointed, but there was one redeeming
feature in so much as it was then no longer necessary to move down to Nottingham. This was
something that my wife had absolutely refused to do. She suggested that I could rent a
small flat in Nottingham and stay there midweek, returning to be with her for week-ends in
the country. After so many years of living out of a suitcase, I found this idea quite
unacceptable and besides, it did not seema very satisfactory way to run a marriage. So,
for the moment at least, the collapse of the idea saved my marriage.
But what was I to do next? The Raleigh people were still telling me that my home was with
them and that they very much wanted me to remain on their payroll. The only trouble
was that they did not really know what to do with me. Eventually they said they would like
me to go on the board of one of the subsidiary companies with a view to eventually
becoming a main board director. But which company should it be?
After the Reg Harris cycle idea had been thrown out, I suggested
to Eric Baker, the export director of Raleigh, that the company should consider a new
plan. The whole point of the Reg Harris' division was that it would hand-build small
numbers of really superb specialist machines for both amateurs and professionals. To
attempt to cater for this sort of market from within the main Raleigh factory was
obviously an impossibility, as nothing causes more chaos in a highly mechanised
production-line than the need for one-off special parts. On the other hand, if Raleigh was
to remain in the forefront of cycle sport, it seemed to me that some sort of hand-building
division was an absolute necessity. Even if it did not make a great deal of
extra money, its value in terms of prestige could be incalculable. I suggested that
Raleigh should look round for a small firm that was already making hand-built racing
cycles and buy it up. Two names immediately sprang to mind, Viking and Carlton. Baker
listened to all this with very great interest, and it was not long before the directors
had officially approved the idea. After an investigation, Viking was ruled out
because its production of four hundred-odd machines a week was getting too close to mass
production, but Carlton seemed just about right. Although the O'Donovan brothers who owned
it were only producing one hundred machines a week in their small factory at
Worksop, they had already made quite a name for themselves all over the world. Detailed
negotiations went on between the two firms, and in the spring of 1960 the deal went
through. Very soon after this, Baker told me that he was putting me on the board of
Carlton and asked me to go and see the O'Donovan brothers, taking with me all the material
I had prepared for the Reg Harris cycle. I was to spend an evening discussing with
them how all these ideas could be incorporated into the Carlton cycle.
I spent hours talking to them about measurements,
angles of bottom brackets and new types of lugs. I had some particularly interesting
suggestions to make on the latter topic as I had only recently returned from a visit to
Fischers, a most important rnanu-facturer of lugs at Schaffhausen in Switzerland.
Later I told them about my ideas for names and colour schemes and went on to the topic of
some quite significant innovations that I had worked out that would make the bicycles
lighter and cheaper as well as more attractive. Finally I returned home feeling that it
had been a pleasantand valuable meeting.
Early the next morning I received a call from Eric
Baker. 'I am astonished,' he said. 'I always thought you were the soul of tact and
discretion."Is there any reason to suddenly doubt that?' I asked quite innocently.
'There certainly is, I have just had the O'Donovans on the tele-phone and the deal is
almost off! What the devil did you say to them last night?'
Gradually, I realised that it had not been what I said that had
annoyed them, but the fact that they had never been informed that I was being put
on their board. It was an unfortunate start, but we soon got over that hurdle and
then I embarked on a whirlwind tour of all Carlton dealers and of those Raleigh dealers
who were to be offered a Carlton franchise. My job was to inform them that Raleigh
had acquired Carlton and that all the old traditions of theWorksop company would continue
to be respected. I thoroughly enjoyed that tour, partly because it gave me a chance
to put my new Jaguar through its paces, and when it was over I heard that it had been a
great success in drumming up enthusiasm. Unfortunately this success caused resentment in
some circles which finally led to my being very politely asked
to resign.
This was a very sad moment for me. I had always had
the greatest possible affection for Raleigh and had got to know everyone at
Nottingham from the night-watchman to the chairman. It was almost unbelievable to realise
that this very special relationship was suddenly over. When I look back at those years
now, the only little grain of satisfaction I can derive from them is the knowledge that
Carlton did gradually adopt almost every single suggestion I putto them, although at the
time everything was greeted with strong objections.
The impossible had happened: Raleigh had turned its
back on me so what was I to do now? Given the benefit of hindsight, I know I ought
to have returned to racing. I was still extremely fit and I know that with even a few
weeks' training I could have returned to a condition in which very few people could
have beenable to catch me. In any case, the standard of world professional sprinting
was already in a decline. But hindsight always distorts the picture, and at that
time it did not seem a very feasible idea. I was left with a serious problem: I
could not very well begin toapply for jobs offered in The Times or The Daily Telegraph
becauseI had had a rather unique background which would have'made it impossible to fill in
the necessary application forms. Besides, I felt rather shy about doing that
anyway: many people suppose that when a well-known sportsman retires and seeks a normal
job, he is really looking for a sort of pension that will give him the opportunity to be
seen around and to give and receive drinks and other perks here and there. They think he
is really incapable of earning his own living. I had no intention of joining that
category myself. |