Richard Parry-Jones

Personal and professional history

Born on 15 September 1951 in Bangor, North Wales, the descendant of a North Wales slate quarry worker, and was named Executive Engineer of Ford's Technological Research in Europe in 1985, He was non-executive chairman of Kelda Group, non-executive director of GKN plc and Cosworth Group Holdings and a council member of both the Royal Academy of Engineering On 16 April 2021, he died from a heart attack on his tractor at his farm in Barmouth.

Environmentalism Parry-Jones embraced environmental initiatives. In a 2000 speech to the Society of Automotive Engineers at The Greenbrier, Parry-Jones said, "What our society wants us to do is to invent the technology to make personal, private transportation sustainable. People expect engineers to do the right thing. It's as if we had taken some kind of Hippocratic oath. And our profession has been around nearly as long as medicine itself."

In 2021, Autocar gave him a Lifetime Achievement award for his services to the automotive industry, informing him of it just two weeks before his death, which occurred in an accident involving a tractor on private land near Barmouth in Wales. Ford executive chairman Bill Ford described Mr Parry-Jones as a "rare talent who left an indelible mark on Ford and the industry".

On October 20, 2022, Ford Motor Company announced that a building used for the improvement of driving dynamics on Ford's Lommel Proving Ground in Belgium will from now on be known as the Richard Parry-Jones Appraisal Center, in honour of the company's renowned engineering leader.