Mike Loasby
‘I’VE BEEN SO FORTUNATE to meet and work with so many brilliant people. Lovely people, too. Most of them…’ A mischievous gleam is never far from the eye of Mike Loasby. Now in his early 80s, still married to the girl he met more than 60 years ago and ‘semi-retired’ in bucolic Shropshire, Loasby is as sharp and lucid as ever. He’s the classic English gent, slightly schoolmasterly, a stickler for accuracy, but with a sense of fun and a gift for understatement. He makes ‘good copy’, as editors say.
Kenneth Michael Loasby – but always Michael or Mike – was born in Coventry, so a career in the industry might have been pre-ordained. His father’s work, however, saw them relocate to rural South Wales when he was a boy.
‘My father was technical director of British Nylon Spinners, and they wanted to set up a factory in a depressed area. So we moved from the city to the country and I got hooked into farming and veterinary surgery. In the meantime I met Anne – and cars, both of which changed the pattern of my life somewhat.’
Veterinary science’s loss was engineering’s gain. In 1957, aged 19, he left Monmouth School and after a ‘wasted year’ joined Alvis as an engineering apprentice. ‘I was not spectacularly successful as an academic, and was obviously panicking my parents. However, they did sponsor me to race a Lotus XI at the time, which introduced me to the marvels of swing-axle suspension.’
Loasby got to know the Lotus first on the road, often using
