Harris Mann was born in London in 1938 and began his career at the bus and coach builder Duple, before a short time in the United States with the Loewy Consultancy. After National Service he worked for Commer and then Ford, where he was involved with the first Escort and the Capri. His Ford boss Roy Haynes persuaded him to move to BMC in 1967 to lead its design studio at Cowley.
Mann worked alongside Haynes on the Marina and, when the design department moved to Longbridge and Haynes left, was left to lead the British Leyland design team from 1970. He took over the Allegro project and then worked on the Diablo project, which became the Princess of 1975. The work he is most famous for was the Triumph TR7, and his last project at British Leyland was the Austin Metro.
He then went freelance, designing the MG ZR, ZS and ZT for MG Rover and consulting for BMW in the mid-1980s, where he proposed the double-headlight look that BMW still uses. The rectangular door handles common to the Marina, Allegro and TR7 were later used on the Range Rover and Land Rover Discovery. He later lectured in design at Coventry University, and died in 2023.
