Tom Karen, designer responsible for everything from the marble run to John Paul II's Popemobile – obituary

Tom Karen, who has died aged 96, was once described as “the man who designed the Seventies” and was responsible, as managing director and chief designer of Ogle Design from 1962 to 1999, for a range of products that occupy a special place in British affections.

These included the build-it-yourself Marble Run, the easy-to-carry Bush TR130 radio; vehicles such as the handsome Reliant Scimitar GTE (1968), a ground-breaking sporting estate car; the three-wheel Reliant Robin (1973); the orange Bond Bug (1970), now a cult classic; Leyland’s T45 range of truck cabs; Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder in Star Wars and the bulletproof Popemobile used by Pope John Paul II on his visit to Britain in 1982. Many also credit him as the designer of the Easy Rider-influenced Raleigh Chopper, which took the UK youth bike market by storm in the 1970s.

As design evolved from post-war austerity to deliver the kind of novelty demanded by increasingly prosperous and sophisticated consumers, the Ogle output was vast and varied, and ranged from the utilitarian to the fantastical. It spanned crash test dummies, baby walkers, aeroplane fit-outs and washing machines.

He was born Thomas Joseph Derrick Paul Kohn into a wealthy family in Vienna on March 20 1926 and spent his early years in a large house in the Czech industrial city of Brno, served by a staff of 17.

His father Paul, of Jewish origin, had inherited wealth through a family bricks and cement works, and married Margaret, the daughter of a well-known portrait painter, Arthur von Ferraris.

When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, the family fled. After living in Belgium for one year and then Nice for a couple of years, they travelled through Spain to Portugal, then flew to Bristol as refugees in the summer of 1942 when Tom was 16, taking up residence in a small house with an outside lavatory. Tom changed his surname to Karen when he took British citizenship.

In 1945 he embarked on a course in Aeronautical Engineering at Loughborough College and, for the next 10 years worked in the aircraft industry, including as a stress-tester in Luton and as a technical illustrator for the Air Registration Board out of Croydon Airport.

But, disliking how much mathematics his work involved, in 1955 he enrolled in a course in industrial design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, under Douglas Scott, designer of the Routemaster bus. After two terms he was headhunted by Ford to join its new styling studio.

Soon realising that he was not cut out for a career in a big company, he got a job with Ogle design, the Letchworth-based company founded by the wartime flying hero David Ogle. When that did not work out he left to join Hotpoint, where he came up with the idea for a top-loading washing machine, then worked for Philips, opening a design office in London.

In 1962, however, when David Ogle was tragically killed in a car accident, he was invited to return to Ogle as managing director and chief designer.

The change prompted Bush to give Ogle six months notice to cancel its consultancy retainer. However, the design group went on to create the Bush TR130 radio which became a bestseller in the 1960s.

Most importantly, Karen built up Ogle’s standing in the motor industry, picking up Reliant as a customer. “The first job was to adapt the Daimler SX250 project that David [Ogle] had designed and turn it into what became the Reliant Scimitar coupé,” Karen recalled. When Reliant wanted more room in the back of the Scimitar, in 1968 Karen and his team came up with the GTE, a full four-seater hatchback powered by a Ford V6 engine, which hit the headlines when Princess Anne (who bought eight) was caught speeding.

In 1969 Reliant bought out Bond Cars and the following year Karen came up with the Bond Bug, a futuristic two seater, three-wheeled micro-car. Essentially consisting of a bright orange-painted fibreglass body fixed on to a Reliant chassis with a lift-up canopy instead of doors, it was launched in 1970 during a period of industrial strife and never took off (one designer later described it as “only marginally less lethal than the C5”). Just 2,268 Bugs were sold between 1970 and 1974, though the car has a strong cult following.

The Raleigh Chopper, with its banana-seat and dragster-influenced design, became a bestseller for the Raleigh Bicycle Company of Nottingham which, according to Karen, had commissioned him in 1966 to come up with a striking new design for youngsters.

He was angered in 2004 when Alan Oakley, Raleigh’s technical director at the time, claimed he was the brains behind the Chopper. Although Raleigh has continued to credit Oakley, records kept by the Design Council and the Design and Industry Association appear to contradict that claim. In 2002 the council nominated Karen for his outstanding achievement in design, including his invention of the Chopper. It seems likely that both Oakley and Karen contributed to a design that, in any case, had its origins in early 1960s bikes from the West Coast of the USA.

Retiring to a house in Cambridge, Karen continued to design, filling his garage with inventions and works in progress and running “invention workshops” for children. In 2020 he published an entertaining memoir, Toymaker: My Journey From War to Wonder.

Tom Karen was appointed OBE in 2018 for services to design. His archive is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Tom Karen is survived by two daughters and two sons.

Tom Karen, born March 20 1926, died December 31 2022