Garry J. Polled, an appreciation - In Memoriam

Last November I was due to meet up with my friend Garry at the Ibis hotel in the Heathrow Airport area. He was flying in from California, where he lived and worked, to his motherland, where he would visit his friends, from childhood, through work or others. We had done this twice before and had had a wonderful time catching up, talking about the performance parts industry and our mutual friends the world over. And Garry, no longer a spring chicken, was his old self, sardonic wit to the fore, intelligent commentary bursting out as always, his often well hidden kindness bubbling to the surface. This time, though, I let him down as, due to a combination of circumstances (including, of course, impecuniousness...) I was unable to make our long-arranged meeting, stuck as I was away from London. Well, I thought, deeply embarrassed and disappointed as I was, I'll make it up to him next time, or find a way to go and visit him in Santa Barbara.

Only I won't, I can't. Not having heard from Garry for a while I was preparing to write him a humorous email when something - surely not a premonition... - made me google his name. An obituary came up - my dear friend had passed away in February without me knowing, after a stroke. Now Garry had had a full and active life, had loads of fun and enjoyed himself a great deal, was in his mid to late seventies so it should not have been unexpected. But it was, kind of.

Garry and I had known each other since the late 1980s - over 30 years - when I first went to see him in Las Vegas at the 1987 SEMA performance parts exhibition. In 1986 we had started an air filter company, together with American and British partners/collaborators to try and service the high performance industry. Our American colleagues had ideas of their own about the course we should follow but wanted to do it with our money, so a falling out ensued which, together with the slowing down of the UK economy which had started in 1987, nearly killed the business stone dead. I had to do a lot of running around, legal manoeuvring, money juggling and what not to try and keep our fledgling business alive.

My memorable 1987 SEMA visit was a completely nutty adventure: I was in Scotland selling wine to my customers there, left my car at Glasgow Airport in the morning, flew to Heathrow, met my assistant there complete with air filter samples, caught a TWA flight to New York where I cleared immigration and customs, then another to Las Vegas via Phoenix. When I arrived at the Flamingo Hilton hotel in Las Vegas I had been travelling for 24 hours non-stop so, with something light to eat I went straight to bed. Early the next morning I went to the exhibition to see as many people as I could and was directed to a company called TWM and Garry Polled, its Managing Director; I was told he was THE man to strike a deal with. We had a meeting at his stand and he invited me to co-exhibit with him the following April at the SEMA East show in Philadelphia, to see how we got on. At the close of the exhibition I headed back to my hotel, had a bite with a friend from motor racing days (Sean Walker, if you must know!) and went straight to bed, as I was on a flight out the next morning at 7:25 to London via Saint Louis, all flying the cheapest possible way. Crazy or what?

Well, we did SEMA East, made a great sales double act, enjoyed Philadelphia and each other's company and agreed to work together. Our two companies collaborated for a number of years (TWM became our US importer and main dealer), we became firm friends, shared memorable times in Britain, the USA or wherever we met up, and I visited Garry in California on a number of occasions. We nearly created a mega performance company at some point, thinking about merging his company with ours and a couple of others but couldn't quite make it happen; after I left the air filter business in the late 1990s we no longer collaborated but stayed friends and talked on a regular, if slightly infrequent, basis.

Garry was an expatriate Brit who had gone to America with his first wife, stayed, and made a remarkable career in the performance parts industry there. He was a carburettor expert - his company name TWM means The Weber Man, after Weber carburettors - one of a handful in the world who knew the subject inside out, but was up to date with all systems; indeed his company was one of the first to produce throttle bodies to replace carburettors on specialist applications. An intelligent, no nonsense man, he was known in the industry in the USA as 'The Wizard'.

Above all he was a loyal friend, always fun to be with, always interesting to talk to, even when there were disagreements, charming, contrary, intelligent, encouraging. That he is no longer at the end of a 'phone, that the times we shared now exist in my head only, that I will never see him again to make up for the last time - these are all things difficult to concede, to accept.

I suppose I'll just have to get used to it.

I have included a photograph of a photograph of Garry (!) taken from his obituary in the Santa Barbara Independent which I found online, acknowledge it and thank them for the warmth of their article on my friend.