Vehicle Design Consultancy

Chris Sawyer BSc. C.Eng F.I.Mech.E

Biography

I have had a lifelong fascination with powered vehicles and engineering of all kinds. I was brought up in a household which contained little other reading matter than books on engineering wonders of the World, aero engine construction and other similar things. My life opened up fully when I got my first Number 6 Meccano kit. My father was an aircraft fitter and an in- shed inventor in the best British tradition.

After a somewhat unspectacular education, based on my general dislike of the formal system, I served a mechanical engineering apprenticeship with ICI in the plastics industry. Having been educated to HNC level, I served a year in the drawing office and left to take an engineering degree at the then Hatfield Polytechnic.

Whilst at college I supported myself and my young family by mending cars in my spare time. My ability to do this was based on the availability of workshop manuals in the local Library which could be copied out in parts, longhand. It was this that led me to realise that my future career was to be in Automotive Engineering.

Scammell Contractor

Scammell Contractor

In 1975 I left college with my degree and joined the wonderful company of Scammell Motors at Watford. Scammell was then part of the enormous Leyland empire. They produced a wide range of commercial vehicles ranging from on-highway 8-wheelers and tractors to airfield crash tenders, heavy haulers and military vehicles. The Scammell system of training for graduate engineers was simply to put them into the Experimental Department and give them tests to undertake. You were left to work how to do it yourself, ask if you really didn’t know and if it all went wrong learn by your mistakes. Because Scammell had become somewhat of a refuge for the remains of the shrinking commercial vehicle parts of Leyland, it included engineers with a wide and varied experience going back to the early days of the industry. It was a unique environment and it suited me very well.

Hillman Imp

Hillman Imp

In 1983 I was transferred to the drawing office to be Advanced Vehicle Engineer and I served in this function until the closure of Scammell in 1987. During this time I campaigned a 1-litre Hillman Imp in Classic off-road trials

Wreckers Unipower

Wreckers Unipower

During my time at Scammell I had taken a particular interest in vehicle recovery, principally for military vehicles. This led me to take up a new post as Chief Engineer at the company Wreckers International, who were at the time market leaders in the civilian heavy recovery bodybuilding business. This proved to be yet another valuable, but steep learning curve which came to an end in the severe economic depression of the early 1990’s.

Unipower 12x8`

Unipower 12x8

At this point I decided that it was time to do what I knew that I would always do eventually from my days of freelance car-mending and that was to work for myself. I formed Chris Sawyer Consulting Engineer and started on an almost seamless sequence of design projects related to chassis and body engineering. A mainstay of this work was the re-emergence of Scammell as Unipower Vehicles, again in Watford and I served as Vehicle Engineering Consultant to Unipower until they were absorbed into the Alvis/GKN/Vickers BAE empire in about 2000.

In order to ensure as much continuous work as possible, I built up a useful offshoot doing forensic reports as an expert witness in a variety of bizarre and interesting court cases.

Following Unipower, I was retained by the Worcester company Carmichael who made bodies for Airfield Fire Crash Tenders and who had taken over the design of the Unipower chassis. This work involved revising the engine and transmission system of the crash tender.

During my consultancy period I have undertaken numerous interesting vehicle design projects including:

  •  Conversion of a Leyland Roadrunner to 4×4 configuration.
  • Design of a floating bridge launcher for an overseas Army
  • Design of various innovative recovery vehicles, suspensions and systems

Some of my more interesting projects with a recovery bias are described in the articles that are reproduced elsewhere on this site.

Since 1991 and in parallel with the above, I formed and developed the company CB Developments to design, develop and market the products that include those shown on this website.

My current interests are classic and vintage motorbikes and cars.

 Services

I offer a vehicle engineering consultancy based on the above experience aimed primarily at vehicle OEM’s, bodybuilders, and vehicle fleet operators. This is particularly aimed at the special vehicle, military logistics, recovery, heavy haulage and airfield fire crash tender market.