Roger Gledhill

Roger spent the first 2 years of a motor vehicle mechanic apprenticeship in the UK for City and Guilds Certification, before his family emigrated to South Africa in 1969. He completed the final 2 years of his apprenticeship, and fully qualified as a mechanic whilst working for Rolls Royce Cars S.A. He continued working for them for a number of years. He became very involved in racing motocross, and after getting sponsorship from Honda S.A. he worked for them as a sales representative in Johannesburg. Up until 1977, he worked mainly for his motocross sponsors, those being Honda, Suzuki, Husqvarna and KTM. He returned to the UK in 1977 where he worked in a motorcycle parts and accessory wholesalers until 1982. He then returned to South Africa to work for General Motors SA, in the first instance as a Quality Engineer, and later as Vehicle Legal and Safety Compliance and Certification Manager. He represented GM South Africa at NAAMSA (equivalent to the UK’s SMMT) and served as vice chair on NAAMSA’s Technical Committee. He was also asked due to his motorsport involvement, to programme manage the build of an homologation special Opel Kadett 2.0l 16v, to counter the dominance of the BMW SA, 325 homologation special in production racing. It resulted in the creation of the GMSA Opel Kadett “Superboss” which dominated South African production racing for many years, and is now a legend in that country.  He returned to the UK in 1994, where he became the tenant and landlord of a pub in Canterbury. Unfortunately his wife became ill, so they left the pub, and he started work with Land Rover engineering at Gaydon, Warwickshire as a vehicle legal & safety homologation and certification principal engineer. In principal this position was to ensure the vehicles were designed to and complied with worldwide legal requirements. The vehicles were then certified through witness testing to those requirements with authorities worldwide to allow sales in the market concerned. In this position he was responsible for the Land Rover Discovery from the start of his employment with JLR, through to his retirement. He also in addition, was responsible for the homologation and certification worldwide of the Range Rover Sport for two years, and also one year assisted Jaguar with homologation and certification of Jaguar XK. He retired in 2016.