Doug Hele, renowned British engineer, was born in 1919.
Doug started his engineering career as an apprentice with the Austin Motor Company at the Longbridge factory in Birmingham before moving on to Douglas Motorcycles in 1945 where he worked as a draughtsman in the motorcycle design team under former Norton chief designer Walter Moore. Moore encouraged him to go to the Norton factory, where he helped develop the Featherbed framed Manx Norton single-cylinder racing models that won world championships in the early 1950s.
After a short time at BSA where he worked on the 250cc single-cylinder racer with BSA chief designer Bert Hopwood, he returned to Norton to continue development of the “Manx”.
His next project was the development of the 500 cc Norton Dominator into a racing motorcycle.
Hele’s prototype ‘Domiracer’ came third in the 1961 Isle of Man TT but the project was abandoned when parent-company Associated Motor Cycles ended racing-development at Norton to cut costs.
The factory race shop’s larger capacity 650 ‘Domiracer’ had showed promise, so Hele developed the 650cc road bike in to the 650SS, which went on to win the Thruxton 500 production-class race for three years in a row.
When Norton closed its Birmingham factory in 1962, Doug worked for Ford for a while but was soon back in the world of motorcycles when he accepted a position as Head of Development with Triumph in Meriden.
His first project was to improve the Bonneville T120, raising the power output from 47 to 52 bhp
Doug then turned his attention to developing the 500cc Tiger 100 into a racer, famously winning the 1966 American Daytona 200 race, resulting in a new street-model in the 1967 range, the Triumph Daytona.
Hele had also started work on development of the three-cylinder Triumph Trident, the most successful race bikes of their time, dominating the 750cc races in Europe and the US.
When Triumph finally closed, Doug Hele turned down a job from a Japanese company and joined outboard motor makers British Seagull In his 70s. Doug ended his career working as a freelance designer on the rotary-engined Norton.
Doug Hele died in 2001 but his legacy remains with his bikes still sought after and admired.