Crafty beginning for the SMMT
31st July 1982, Page 17
31st July 1982
Page 17
Page 17, 31st July 1982
— Crafty beginning for the SMMT
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WHO WOULD have thought that stealth would be needed to form an organisation as overt and respectable as the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders? Frederick Simms seemed to believe it was, because he used SF Edge's victory in the Paris-Innsbruck Gordon Bennett Trophy race in a Napier as a ruse to call 2 leading vehicle makers and importance to a luncheon on, coincidentally, July 22, 1902.
His purpose was in fact to recruit members for the SMMT, whose name he had registered the previous week. It succeeded.
Today the society, which has just celebrated its 80th anniversary, has 1,530 member companies paying some £1.5m a year in subscriptions and a central staff of 120. And all conceived by cunning!