Who can recall the person whose company MG Maestro was stolen from the Oxford office Isys House and later appeared on the TV national news doing doughnuts in Blackbird Leys before being set on fire.


The time that Grosvenor House saw lots of car thefts and wheels of cars stolen. This included when I was in a meeting at Grosvenor House being told my company MG Maestro which I thought was in the car park had been stolen and recovered and could I go to the police station. The police had to watch it be stolen and driven onto the public road before chasing it around Redditch and many of my work colleagues witnessed the police chase and wondered what I was up to!


The time when a car was destroyed in the Heathrow car park when the IRA launched a mortar attack.


The person who when driving the XJS at 70mph down the Redditch bypass had the car threw itself into reverse and wreck the car, luckily the driver was ok.


The person who had the Diesel Montego Estate that was stolen and used as a getaway car for a bank raid in Northumbria.

There was of the TV crew following John Leighfield around the car park, asking if he could justify the amount of profit he made when AT&T took over. I seem to remember the news report mention a figure of £4million !

An another crew following up claims of Industrial Espionage ending up interviewing Chris Chiles who was taking from a forth-floor window of Grosvenor house.

‘In Systems The Established Leader’ was not an official tag line but some in the company said it stood for "I Stand To Earn Less!"

Yes very successful computer systems etc. Spun off Rover i think, was floated on stock exchange as a separate company. I think took off bigtime & went to around £32.00 per share overnight. Employees had been given so many shares each according to position in company and some made a lot of money!

Real Times 1st April 1987

When I started at CDC in 1984, if you had a non-BL car you had to use the spaces furthest from the building. I didn’t have a car when I started so it was either my sister’s Mini (good) or my parents Cortina (not good). As a trainee I was convinced I would be sacked if I got it wrong. - Scott Parker

From the “Faces of ISTEL” images I remember Jeff Woodhams, Edna Brown, Les Cowell, Brian Hollocks, Richard Taylor,  Peter Kershaw, Frances (Fran) Woodbridge and and Tony Waller

These are all from AIVIS, previously DSS.

I was recruited to work on VISIT (Les was the head of sales, Peter Kershaw was my boss and Richard Taylorwas another manager). Jeff moved over from another bit of Istel to work on it. Tony Waller worked on it though I think worked on simulation stuff first. He was still working at whoever now owns Witness within living memory I think.
Brian Hollocks was a leading light in simulation and went on to be a professor at Bournemouth University.

I wasn't on those brochures, predated me slightly. My girlfriend worked at Istel too, she might remember some more.

We used to have a tray for awful vending machine coffee and we cut out and put people's pictures on their spot if they had one!

Best wishes,
John Styles

The Perils of being the “Expert”

I would like to share a smile about our (Istel) attempts to gain business in the manufacturing world in the late 1980s. Some detail escapes me and no names given, but there were a number of amusing episodes in this saga.

Peugeot were building a new engine assembly facilitiy in the Netherlands. They had engaged consultants to outline a control system for the facility, and find a company to develop and implement the system. I was tasked with accompanying our Sales Director to a Peugeot factory over there to see how they assembled engines in order to cost the systems development. Thus, I had to behave like an expert despite never having seen an engine assembly facility before! Consequently I did not ask too many questions for fear of shooting myself in the foot.

Our Sales Director did not like flying and, upon our return approach to Heathrow just as we were crossing the M25, the aircraft suddenly accelerated hard with a steep turn to the right, aborting the landing. One rather unsettled Sales Director!!

We put together our sales proposal and quotation. As we proposed developing a bespoke system and implementing it with our development staff based in the Netherlands, our Sales Director costed built in accommodation costs based upon hiring some narrow boats.

I had to take the finished proposal & quotation to a board meeting for approval, prior to its submission. I was scheduled on immediately following their lunch break at The Lygon Arms in Broadway. I was invited in to the room where they had dined to find that they (The Board) had just presented one of those childrens extendable hands, with a trigger to grip things, to the Austin Rover Division director as an aid to picking up orders - the insinuation being that getting orders from AR was that easy!
Having obtained approval for the quote I hot footed back to our offices in order that our Sales Director could despatch our proposal, quote and other sales matter. This was done by courier as we had only hours to spare before the closing time of 5pm that Friday. Thus, a fax of the quotation was also sent to the Consultants fax number to ensure we beat the deadline.

It was only upon double checkinmg the safe arrival of our quotation that it was discovered that the consultants were on the same office block floor as our main rival, and the fax number was not in the consultants office, but our rivals. Ooops.

We did not get the job, but a learning experience. We subsequently surmised that, as Istel had a good reputation in this arena for putting together comprehensive proposals with realistic costs, we were being used as a yardstick enabling Peugeot and their consultants to budget and judge others realistically, For me, it was a fun experience.

Rogan Meadows