Doug Hele

Douglas Lionel Hele (13 July 19193 November 2001) was a pioneering English motorcycle engineer with Triumph and other firms: BSA, Douglas and Norton. He was born in Birmingham in 1919 and died in Hagley, Worcestershire on 2 November 2001.

Career Described as an 'outstanding student' at King's Norton Secondary School. Hele started his career in engineering as an apprentice with the Austin Motor Company at the Longbridge factory in Birmingham where he worked throughout the Second World War. He moved on to Douglas Motorcycles in Bristol 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 Polish engineer Leo Kusmicki design and develop the Featherbed framed Manx Norton single-cylinder racing models that won world championships in the early 1950s.

Hele then turned his attention to developing the 500 cc Tiger 100 into a racer, winning the 1966 American Daytona 200 race, resulting in a new top 500 cc street-model having twin Amal carburettors being introduced in late 1966 as part of the 1967 range, named as Triumph Daytona. The race win was repeated in 1967.

At the 1969 Belgian Grand Prix on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in the Ardennes, Triumph's factory tester Percy Tait led the world champion Giacomo Agostini for three laps and finished second at an average speed of 116 mph on Hele's Daytona racer.

Hele was offered the chance to return to Norton with their then-new F750 team for 1972, but decided to stay with Triumph. By the early 1970s the BSA-Triumph group was in financial trouble and Hele moved to the experimental team at Kitts Green in Birmingham. When Triumph finally closed Doug Hele turned down a job from a Japanese company and joined outboard motor makers British Seagull in Dorset. In his 70s Hele ended his career working as a freelance designer on the rotary-engined Norton model.