'Jaguar World Vol. 10 No 1 September/October 1997. '
"I had the finest panel beaters in all of
Coventry."
Paul Skilleter profiles Edward Loades,
whose company, Abbey Panels, played - and is
still playing - a vital role in Jaguar's success.
You may not think so, with the many books and the countless articles penned about Jaguar over the years, but there are still some mightily important Jaguar stories yet to be fully told. And thatof Ted Loades (as he is known throughout the industry) is surely one of them. Yes, every enthusiast worth his salt knows that Abbey
Panels built XJ220's body and had helped in various ways with bodywork for other models, but just how vital Ted and his company were to William Lyons' success has only become apparent- to me, at least - quite recently.
In fact, as one former Jaguar executive has observed, without Abbey Panels, Jaguar's expansion in the 1950s and 1960s might have been far smaller than it actually was. So, but for Ted Loades, it could be argued, Jaguar today might have been very different, without quite the same heritage of wonderful models produced in such relatively quick succession since the war.
Ted Loades is now 87 and his craggy features tell of a hard upbringing and of a determination to succeed. His father, he recounts, was a Grimsby fisherman who "died when he was 27 and left my mother and four sons,of which I'm the second. And there was no widow's pension then, so she had to struggle. She took in washing - they would fetch it to her front door, supply the soap, and she got half a crown for a bag of washing." Even then there was the threat of the workhouse, should the authorities feel Mrs Loades was not providing properly for her children. But she persevered and "gave all the boys a trade."
I went straight into marine engineering at 14, as a sheet metal worker on the trawlers."
Wishing to better himself, after some 11 years Ted left marine engineering for aircraft work, first at Westland Helicopters where "they put me in the Experimental Department on the first Lysander
helicopter - locked me in, and I'd got to know my stuff because there was nobody to tell me..." Then, after just a few months, he moved to Brough Engineering near Hull. "I said 'I'm an experienced aircraft worker'!".