Dennis Poore watched with relish as Associated Motor Cycles began imploding under a mountain of debt. In 1960, AMC, the giant conglomerate that included Matchless, AJS, Norton, Francis-Barnett and James, had turned a profit of £219,000 but a year later the books revealed a massive £350,000 loss ($980,000, over $10 million today). Villiers Engineering, which manufactured engines in Wolverhampton for small motorcycles like the James and Fanny-B, was also on the ropes.
The auto racer
The boss of Manganese Bronze Holdings, Roger Dennistoun Poore, was not your average company chairman. He earned a Master’s degree in engineering at King’s College, Cambridge, where he began by making his own pillar drill vice from scratch. Then he made a 4-inch bench vice, even pouring the molten metal for the castings. And very…