16 November 2006

Top award for Sir Anthony Bamford

Autocar, the UK's leading weekly motoring magazine, has presented Sir Anthony Bamford with a prized Special Achievement Award for his inspirational role behind the glorious JCB DIESELMAX project. Every year the Autocar Awards celebrate the biggest success stories of the past 12 months ­ and those who made them happen.

The magazine's citation for this Special Achievement Award reads: 'No one disputes where the idea to build the JCB DIESELMAX, the record-breaking car which recently achieved 350.029mph on the Bonneville salt flats, came from.

It was born several years ago in the head of Sir Anthony Bamford, chairman of Britain¹s best-known digger company, both as a means of publicising the new 5.0-litre four cylinder engine that powers many of the 25,000 plus vehicles his company makes every year, and also as a kind of patriotic gesture, a way of furthering the heroic deeds of Segrave, Eyston, the Cambells, Richard Noble and the rest of this country's famed record-breakers. The achievement will always belong to many people, not least Wing Commander Andy Green who drove the JCB DIESELMAX, but the idea will always be known as Sir Anthony's and for that he deserves our special accolade.'

This year's Autocar Awards ceremony took place at the spectacular Mercedes-Benz World at Brooklands on Tuesday night, Andy Green collected the coveted award on Bamford's behalf.