Alfred Owen

British industrialist whose Rubery Owen group owned the BRM team from the early 1950s to 1974

When his father died in 1929, Alfred Owen abandoned Cambridge to take charge of Rubery Owen, which grew into Britain's largest privately owned family firm. He sat on the boards of ninety nine companies and chaired more than eighty, and still found room for thirty volunteer posts in social work and a long spell as mayor and councillor in Sutton Coldfield.

His passion was racing cars. He owned the BRM team from the early 1950s until 1974, when it passed to his brother in law Louis Stanley, and in 1963 the Ferodo trophy went to him as the person who had done most for British racing that year. He was knighted in 1961 and died on the 29th of October 1975.

Teams led

• British Racing Motors, 1952 to 1974