SPORTS car owners owe a great debt to Sydney Enever.

He was the man who designed the iconic MGA and MGB models that brought sports car motoring to thousands of enthusiasts at a reasonable price.

He also designed cars that broke land speed records, including the famous Roaring Raindrop.

Mr Enever spent 51 years in motor car production and design in Oxford and Abingdon.

He grew up in Paradise Square, St Ebbe’s, where his mother ran a boarding house, and attended South Oxford School.

In 1920, at the age of 14, his headmaster ‘placed’ him with Morris Garages at their Queen Street showrooms as a 12s 6d a week messenger boy.

A year later, he moved to Morris Garages’ workshop behind the Clarendon Hotel in Cornmarket Street to train as a mechanic.

He later applied for a job at Morris Motors, Cowley, to earn more money. When his bosses found out, they offered him a job at their new offshoot, the MG Car Company, at Abingdon, where he eventually became chief designer.

Apart from the MGA and MGB which became the world’s top-selling sports cars – more than half a million were sold – he designed cars which set new world speed records.

He was responsible for the EX135, in which Major Goldie Gardner smashed the 200mph barrier on German autobahns in 1938.

He was also behind the 1500cc version, EX181, known as the Roaring Raindrop, in which Stirling Moss achieved 245mph at Utah in the United States in 1957 and in which, two years later, Phil Hill achieved 254mph.

Theresa Mitchell, whose father Terry was MG chief chassis designer, was reminded of Mr Enever’s contribution to the motor industry when she visited Blenheim Palace for the 50th anniversary celebrations of the MGB.

In a letter to Memory Lane, she describes him as “the Oxford engineer with a natural flair for design and an instinctive sense of what the customer wanted”.

She adds: “Oxford can be justifiably proud of Sydney Enever, the man from St Ebbe’s whose classic MG sports cars continue to be cherished by their proud owners around the world.”