Sir Colin Hope

Born: May 17, 1932

Died: August 31 2015

SIR Colin Hope, who has died aged 83, was a leading British industrialist who, though born and brought up in the North West of England, set up home on the Scottish coast and lived there most of his life.

As a senior corporate executive, he was a key player in the boardrooms of some of the UK’s biggest automotive companies through the eighties and nineties. But at weekends and holidays he would return to the sanctuary of his family home in Ayrshire.

He and his wife Gillian had fallen in love with Scotland in the late 1960s when, as an ambitious young manager, his company had sent him to run a branch factory in Kilmarnock.

They looked around for a property to buy and settled on a house overlooking the shore near Ayr. Though Sir Colin’s career soon took him back south once again, he and Gillian never abandoned their Scottish home, eventually moving back permanently when he retired.

Sir Colin was an influential figure in a succession of major companies in the car component industry, including tyre maker Dunlop and the Manchester-based manufacturing firm of Turner and Newall.

Dunlop was one of the best-known brands in the world when he joined it in 1975 to head up its high-tech engineering division which, at the time, was working on braking and suspension systems. Three years later Hope was appointed director of tyre production in the UK and in 1981 he took a seat on the main board as the European head of Dunlop’s tyre operation.

The 1980s, however, brought mounting financial problems for Dunlop. The combination of an ill-judged merger with Italian giant Pirelli and the continuing decline of the auto industry in Britain left the company in difficulty. Hope was tasked with managing the sale of the European tyre division to a Japanese firm. Then, when Sir Michael Edwardes, the former boss of British Leyland, was appointed chairman in 1984, a dozen members of the board left. However, though Colin Hope was one of them, he was kept on as part of the new management team, becoming chief executive of Dunlop Engineering International.

In 1985 Hope was approached by Lord Tombs (then Sir Francis Tombs), chairman of Turner & Newall, to take over as managing director. Tombs, one of the leading industrialists of his generation, had restructured the company, whose fortunes had been built on asbestos-related materials, and was keen to expand its automotive side. To this end, in 1986 the two men launched a hostile bid for the Midlands-based Allied Engineering (AE). For Colin Hope there was a certain irony involved in this. He had worked for AE’s Glacier Metal subsidiary in the 1960s. Indeed, in 1968 it was his promotion to director to run Glacier’s factory in Kilmarnock which first brought him to Scotland - and that house near Ayr.

Though the bid failed T&N was allowed to bid again. Second time around another player entered the bidding process - controversial publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell. T&N prevailed and finally took over AE in December 1986.

Hope succeeded Tombs as executive chairman in 1989, ensuring that the company survived and prospered through the recession of the early Nineties by focussing its attention on high-tech automotive products. He was also able to reach a £130m settlement on many of the asbestos claims.

By 1997 four-fifths of T&N’s £2 billion worldwide turnover was in the automotive sector. Hope retired after negotiating the sale of the group in 1998 to Federal-Mogul, a US auto component maker. By then he had been diagnosed with a debilitating muscle-wasting condition. However, though it increasingly affected his mobility, his mind remained as sharp as ever.

Despite his condition, he went on to become chairman of Bryant the housebuilder and brickmakers Ibstock Johnson.

He served on a panel of industrial advisers to Prime Minister John Major and was knighted in 1996 for services to the motor industry. He was president of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders from 1991 till 1993.

Colin Frederick Newtown Hope was born in Birkenhead. His father was general manager of Lewis’s department store in Liverpool. Colin was educated at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire, and then St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where he studied engineering.

By the time he graduated his father had opened his own garage business in Surrey and Colin went to work for him. He joined AE in 1962.

He married Gillian Carden in 1959 - after a very short courtship. They had met on a ferry going to France. Colin, who was heading for a New Year ski-ing break, had gone to Gillian’s aid when she became seasick. Before the holiday ended she had accepted his proposal of marriage.

Away from work Sir Colin’s great interest was restoring and running his vintage Armstrong Siddeleys. At the time of his death he owned six of them. He was also a trustee of the National Motor Museum.

Sir Colin, who died at Ayr Hospital on August 31, retired from the business world in 2001 and he and his wife settled back in Ayr. They also owned a home near Stratford-Upon-Avon where they would stay during the week while he was working.

Sir Colin is survived by Gillian, his sons Marc and Vince and five grandchildren.

Allan Laing