Originally Posted by
chevvron
It was originally designed by the De Havilland part of Hawker Siddeley ie nothing to do with BAE originally.
I recall that there wan't enough interest in it when first proposed in the '60s so it was put on the back burner until Wedgie Benn (the bloke who gave government money to build the DeLorean car in Northern Ireland) 'discovered' it and pushed for its development.
I also visited the production line at Hatfield in I think 1985; those 'De Havilland' workers were incredibly proud of the aircraft they were building and took great pride in their product.
We had quite a bit of interest in it in 1972/3, but that was a period of high inflation. Our potential customers wanted a fixed-forward price to remove the uncertainty but we were unable to offer such a price as too much was unknown.
We re-launched at about the time that the industry was nationalised to become BAe (1976) and it still carried its de Havilland type number . . .