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Mr Horsepower still has the taste for speed

17/ 6/2006

AL MELLING is a self-confesed eccentric. He wakes every morning at 6am, spending the first two hours of the day in bed devoting himself to what he calls thinking time - in other words, sorting out problems from the day before.

The 63-year-old, once described by an auto magazine as Britain's 'secret Mr Horsepower', was born with the scent of engine fumes in his nostrils.

He was only nine when he acquired his first engine.

"As a child I built a bogie with pram wheels and an orange box.

"I used to collect empty bottles, returning them to the shop. One day I made 3s 6d and went to a local scrap yard where I had spotted a Standard 9 engine. When I told the owner I wanted to buy it, he said I was crazy, but told me if I could get it home I could have it for 3s 6d and so the deal was done.

"I put the engine on my bogie. It took me two days to get it home. The first night I had to leave it on the pavement outside the Co-op shop, which had late opening hours so I thought it would be safe.

"But I was back at 6am the next morning to complete the journey to the back yard of my Royton home.

"I built a wooden trestle to put it on, but looking back now it was a dangerous thing to do, as the engine fan was spinning round unsecured, the fuel tank was a coffee tin and it had no exhaust. One day I spilled fuel all over my mother's newly washed tea towels. That didn't go down too well."

On leaving school Al attended college and came out with a degree in mechanical engineering, not to mention an 'attitude' problem.

"There's no secret about that. I was always a bit brash and really did have an attitude problem. I was totally unemployable. I didn't agree with what was happening in the British car industry, either.So when I could I decided to go freelance on engine design."

That was after Al had floated from job to job in the late 1960s and early 70s.

"My mum and dad were hard-working people so I could never leave a job without having another to go to."

He was once chief engineer at Oldham bus garage and also worked on the M62, then under construction, repairing bulldozers.

"But I couldn't settle down until one day fate intervened."

He was at the TT races on the Isle of Man when he fell into conversation with a Japanese man after spotting two Japanese bikes.

He got talking to him in true no-nonsense Melling style about perceived deficiencies in their engines' design.

Incredibly the Japanese seemed to warm to him, encouraging him to start designing in his own right and eventually offering him paid work.

Afer setting up his own freelance business things 'just snowballed' and now he's probably Britain's most prolific engine designer.

His latest creation is, of course, the ultra powerful V10 Melling Hellcat - the story of which was published in the Observer last month.

The car, dubbed by Al as the British Ferrari, is soon to go into production, both at his Rochdale factory and in Detroit where 100 cars a month will be built.

The V10 Melling Hellcat is the only British manufactured sports car, a car he hopes will fly the British flag and put Rochdale on the motoring map at Le Mans in 2008.

In a career that now stretches back 30 years or more, Al has developed and designed engines for Japanese firms, General Motors, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Rolls Royce and also for Formula One cars.

He's also consultant to F1 teams, advising them on how to cure engine problems and also get more performance out of their machines.

It was his V12 engines for the Jaguar team at Le Mans that inspired the famous Aston Martin Vanquish engine.

Al's firm also designed the Monos motorcycle in 2004, Monos being the Greek for The Only One.

When he's not busy at work, Al can be found pottering around his home, more often than not dressed in his trademark boiler suit.

"Most evenings I spend a lot of time on the phone, talking to companies abroad. I also do a lot of after-dinner speaking."

He's also got his own private light railway in his spacious back garden. The train can take up to 10 or 12 people at a time, so, like everything else in Al's life, it's well designed.

He owns a yacht in Portugal, often driving his 40ft coach, which is fully fitted with a bathroom and shower, all the way down to the Atlantic coast, a journey that takes up to five days.

And he also pays tribute to his wife Margaret, who he unhesitatingly describes as 'my best friend'.

In 1998 Autocar magazine described Al Melling as man 'with a Biggles-like quality who comes across as a genuine and satisfyingly unconventional British hero'.

With a string of designs for the most illustrious automotive names in history, whether production, sports or competition, his reputation today among his peers remains unimpeachable.

He's a true stalwart of Rochdale's motoring story.