10/17/2026
This Day in Auto History
10.17.1926
One hundred years ago, George Henry Turnbull, a longtime British automobile executive with Standard, Triumph, British Leyland Ltd., and 'father' of the Korean-built Hyundai was born. He was the son of the manager of the Standard Motor Company's service and spare parts organization. As an apprentice at Standard, George won the Sir John Black engineering scholarship, became the Personal Assistant of Standard's technical director, Edward Grinham, and then he left Standard in 1955 to take a job as works manager at Petters Limited, makers of diesel engines. He then returned to what was now Standard-Triumph at an interesting time: Alick Dick was in the throes of re-structuring the company, and attempted to model Standard-Triumph along the same lines as General Motors. Turnbull later noted that Dick somehow, "got the scale slightly wrong”. Dick split into three divisions: sales, manufacturing and engineering. It was for manufacturing of cars that Turnbull was made Director and General Manager.
Soon, under Dick's leadership, the business was running at a loss and with it came the sale of Standard-Triumph to Leyland. With new paymasters came a new manager, and so it was Stanley Markland who was brought in to turn things around. Turnbull was embraced as an integral part of the new management team, so when Markland retired and Donald Stokes replaced him as executive chairman, it was Turnbull who followed him up the corporate ladder.
When the reorganizaton of British Leyland went to a more centralized management model, Turnbull left on good terms and went to help start up Hyundai in Korea. He went out to the Pacific Rim and set up a manufacturing base, almost from scratch and oversaw the introduction of the Pony model from nothing. Hyundai was quickly established and by May 1976, the company got the Pony on the market. Not bad when one considers that Turnbull joined the company in March 1974. After he left there he got the Iranian National car company moving along with production of the revived Hillman Hunter. His final stop would be with the newly renamed Talbott company in the UK.
