Parry Thomas

John Godfrey Parry Thomas was born in Wrexham on 6 April 1884 and went on to twice raise the world land speed record. The wee set in 1926 at Pendine Sands and he was tragically killed a year later attempting to raise the record again at the same venue

Thomas was inducted onto the ‘Roll of Honour’ on the 100th anniversary of him breaking the record for the first time in his self-built car, ‘Babs’, on Monday, 27 April 2026. A century earlier he has achieved a speed of 169.30 mph over one kilometre and 168.74 mph over a mile course.

A day later he pushed the records over the 170 mph mark, reaching 172.09 mph over the kilometre stretch and 171.69 mph for the mile. To put that achievement in proper perspective, his figures added 19 mph to the previous best times.

It was an incredible achievement – a Welshman as a world record holder in a car that he had built himself.

At the centenary event the reconstrcuted ‘Babs’ was driven on the beach by retired university lecturer Geraint Owen. He grew up with ‘Babs’ after his father, Owen Wyn Owen, became the third main character in a remarkable story of Welsh endeavour.

While Parry Thomas captured the headlines for his record breaking efforts in 1926, and then his unfortunate death a year later back at Pendine chasing an even faster time, Owen took centre stage in March 1969 when he successfully applied to excavate ‘Babs’ from her sandy grave and painfully reconstruct her.

He did such a great job that even today his son reckons he can get her up to around 140mph. Not that he will be opening up the throttle that much when he runs her up and down the beach at Pendine next week to make the centenary of the world record.

“I drove ‘Babs’ at Pendine 10th years ago when we marked the 90th anniversary of the record and my father did the same in 1976 for the 50th. On the 75th anniversary we went to Parry Thomas’ grave at Byfleet to pay our respects,” said Geraint Owen.

“My dad taught technical engineering at Bangor Technical College and had always been fascinated by cars. He was medically discharged from the army after an accident in 1944 and he took to renovating old cars as part of his therapy.

“Then, like all good quests, he was in the pub one night and asked about what his next project was going to be. It was around the time that Donald Campbell was following in his father Malcolm’s footsteps and chasing records.

“He died in 19767 on Coniston Water as he attempted to beak the water speed record with Bluebird. Dad knew about the rivalry between Malcolm Campbell and Parry Thomas back in the Twenties and felt Parry hadn’t had the credit he deserved.

“Then came the idea of digging up ‘Babs’ and rebuilding her. It was, if you like, his Indiana Jones moment. Other people had talked about doing something, but he went out and actually did it.

“I was 11 months old when dad brought ‘Babs’ home to our house in Capel Curig, in Snowdonia, and I guess you can say I’ve grown up with the car.”

After lying in a sandy grave for 42 years you would have thought the car would have been a totally wreck. Before she was dug up the initial thoughts were to try to salvage a few pieces to put on display in a museum.

But as she was being excavated, Owen was delighted to see that more, much more of the car was intact than he had dreamed of.

“Because the aluminium was bolted to a steel chassis, it acted like a sacrificial anode, dissolving away but in turn preserving the steel. So wherever the bodywork was attached, it had completely disappeared, Geraint Owen explained to Octane magazine in 2016.

“But that also meant that many of the steel parts had survived incredibly well. You could put your finger through the alloy gearbox casing, it was so soft, yet the steel internals were good enough to re-use. In fact, the original ball bearings are still in there.

“The engine was badly damaged. It had been reported that the camshaft ends were deliberately smashed off with sledgehammers to deter souvenir hunters when the car was buried, but the bodywork was so bent by the accident that I don’t think the bonnet could have been removed.

“To get the chassis running again, dad bought a Liberty tank engine. Then he was offered a replacement Liberty aero engine that the harbour pilot in New York had stashed away in a shed. It had come out of a police boat used during Prohibition and it was sent over as unaccompanied hand luggage on the QE2 – presumably one of the perks of being the harbour pilot!

“Dad built-up the original engine’s crankcase, crank and rods with the cylinders and camshafts from the donated engine. In 1986, a rod let go while the car was being driven at Silverstone and wrecked the unit, so the internals from ‘Babs’ original engine were put back into the original crankcase and the whole unit is now in storage at the National Museum of Wales.

“The gearbox casing had to be replaced. The original was from a 1909 Blitzen Benz, so the chances of finding a spare unit were negligible. Fortunately, British engineering company GKN came to the rescue, by offering to cast a new casing from a pattern made out of the original.

“Everyone wanted to help because the story of ‘Babs’ captured the imagination of so many people in those pre-social media days.”

By the mid Seventies ‘Babs’ was drivable as a rolling chassis and the early road tests were made on the A5 in north Wales. Having been put to work on ‘Babs’ at such a young age, and been bitten by the same bug as his father in terms of loving engineering and playing around with old cars, Geraint Owen has continued to look after his father’s pride and joy.

“My earliest recollection is of rubbing the corroded tail panels with a piece of emery paper when I was three or four,” said Geraint Owen.

“I grew up thinking everyone else must have a 27 litre car in their father’s shed. I simply can’t remember a time when ‘Babs’ wasn’t with us. I first got to drive her when I was 18 and it is a special thrill every time I get behind the wheel.

“It’s very much a family enterprise these days. On one trip to Pendine with the car when my son, Miles, was quite young, we packed a bucket and spade for him which he ended up using to help us dig out ‘Babs’ from some soft sand.

“I can probably say I’ve driven ‘Babs’ more than even Parry Thomas did before he died. It is a privilege to get behind the wheel of a car that was driven by such a bright, intelligent and gifted engineer.

“He was a Welshman competing in Wales and making the whole world sit up and take notice. When he set his world record only eight humans had ever travelled faster than him and that was in an aeroplane.

“His was the last true racing car to hold the world record and he had built it himself. I just hope that the anniversary run will switch more people on to the story and keep the name and legacy of Parry Thomas alive.”

Having helped his father re-build and revitalise ‘Babs’, Geraint Owen is no embarking on another ambitious project – renovating another of Parry Thomas’ favourite cars.

“I’m about 4,000 hours into renovating Parry Thomas’ Flat Iron car. That was his Grand Prix car and he loved driving it at Brooklands,” he added.

So who were John Godfrey Parry Thomas and ‘BABS’?

Born in Wrexham on 6 April 1884, he was the son of the curate of Rhosddu. The family moved to nearby Oswestry when he was five years old, and he was educated at Oswestry School. He went on to study engineering at The City and Guilds College, in London. His family surname was Thomas, not a hyphenated Parry-Thomas as some sources maintain, and he was known as Godfrey to his family. He used Parry as his Christian name for work and motor racing.

Sporty by nature, he played as a centre half for Holywell Town and was the first person in Holywell to own a motor cycle. “His skill and daring gained him considerable popularity in the district,” explained one local resident.

He longed to be a mechanic and turned himself into a hugely respected engineer. He went on from Oswestry School to study electrical engineering at The City & Guilds College, in London in 1902. He served his apprenticeship at Siemens Brothers Dynamo Works and subsequently with Clayton and Shuttleworth, Lincoln.

He then spent two years in experimenting on road and rail vehicles with the ‘Thomas Transmission’,  an infinite-ratio electrical transmission, of which he was the inventor, and from 1908 to 1911 was joint managing director of Thomas Transmission.

A partnership with Leyland saw his invention used in a London bus, railcars and a tramcar and a job job with Leyland Motors soon followed. He was elected a member of the Institution of Automobile Engineers in 1912 and by 1913 he was chief designer of Leyland Motors. He was much in demand on government advisory boards during WWI.

He was responsible for the design of the ‘Leyland Eight’ and of the commercial vehicles produced by his firm. He wanted to build a classic car and with the help of Reid Railton he poured his energies into creating a rival to the Rolls Royce. The Leyland Eight tourer, branded the ‘Lion of Olympia’ when first launched at Olympia in 1920, was powered by a 6.9 litre, eight-cylinder engine. It went on sale a year later at the princely sum of £2,700 (or £171,563 in today’s money!).

Only 14 were made and Thomas insisted on testing all of them, driving each car up to 100mph. At the time, the world land speed record was only 124mph. Two were built for the Maharajah of Patiala and one for Irish revolutionary leader, Michael Collins. The cars were all fitted with different bodies and it was a ‘Leyland Eight’ that Thomas used in his early competitions in 1922.

His real ambition was to be a racing driver and after convincing the Leyland directors to let him loose on the Brooklands track with one of his new machines he left the company to pursue his dreams. He moved into a cottage at the Brooklands racing track and was given plenty of spare parts by Leyland o help him build his dream car. He soon established himself as one of the most capable drivers in the world. He entered the 1925 French Grand Prix and was listed to race in the inaugural British Grand Prix at Brooklands in 1926, although his ‘Flat Iron’ did not start.

The car in which he met his death was practically of his own design. ‘Babs’ – nobody knows the origin of the name for the car – consisted of a modified racing chassis previously owned by Count Louis Zborowski, another British Grand Prix driver. He died in an accident at Monza in 1924 and Thomas was able to buy for the knock down price of £125 his ‘Higham Special’ from his estate after his death and fitted it with a 12-cylinder, 400-brake horse-power Liberty aero engine, Benz gearbox and a chain final drive.

As well as ‘Babs’ he also raced his by now much-modified ‘Leyland Eight’, now christened the ‘Leyland-Thomas’, a Lanchester Forty, and a pair of small-capacity and ultra-low specials dubbed ‘Flat Irons’. A bad crash in August 1925 in his Leyland-Thomas delayed work on ‘Babs’, although in October that year he took her to Pendine for the first time. The goal was to break Malcolm Campbell’s 1924 world land speed record of 146.16mph. Bad weather frustrated that attempt, but he was back on Welsh sand in April 1926. Over two days he re-wrote the record books and etched his name into sporting history by reaching 170.6 mph.

For Thomas, 1926 was undoubtedly his greatest year. As well as numerous race wins he broke two world land speed records, he also went on to break a further eight speed records in October to make it 12 successful record attempts in five months.
Campbell returned to Pendine with his new Napier-engined Bluebird in January 1927 and raised the record to 174.223 mph over the measured mile. Waiting in the wings to try to fly his 10000 horse power Sunbeam to even faster speeds was Henry Segrave. Thomas didn’t want to be outdone and despite a heavy cold went back to Pendine on 3 March 1927.

About 100 yards beyond the end of the measured mile, the car skidded, rolled over and then came to rest the right-way-up. Thomas was killed instantly and had to be pulled from the wreckage as flames began to spring from the car.

The Daily Mirror motoring correspondent said of Thomas: “Designer, builder, and driver of record-breaking motor-cars, Thomas was unquestionably the greatest British racing motorist and the leading track driver of the world. He was the holder of far more world’s records than any other driver. Tens of thousands of spectators have gasped with amazement at his daring on the Brooklands track. He gave them a tremendous thrill in the summer of 1925, when, lapping at over 120 mph, his off-side front wheel for a fraction of a second, was actually over the edge of the track. He was devoted to motor racing, body and soul, and for three years past had lived the life of a hermit in a small wooden bungalow in the centre of the motor track at Brooklands.”

A few days after the crash, and after the inquest into his death, ‘Babs’ was towed by tractor up beyond the dunes and tipped upside down into a large hole. It would remain there, largely forgotten, for the next 42 years.