Which? complaints

Which? claims nine drivers in ten think cars should have spare wheels. That means nine drivers out of ten are either living in the Dark Ages of the motor car, or drive something old with worn-out wheels. They think they may need to get the Stepney out and affix it by the roadside. Don’t they realise life’s not like that now?

They don’t trust tyres. They trust engines and transmissions. They don’t carry a spare gearbox or camshaft belt, yet these are as likely to fail as a modern properly inflated tyre. Dear me yes father always had a spare wheel in the boot or, in our first Wolseley, in a metal casing on the outside of what would have been the boot lid. There it got wet, rusty, and was usually flat when you needed it. Come to think of it the cleverly named Jackall (jack-all, geddit) hydraulic jacking system you worked by pumping a handle through a hole in the floor didn’t always lift the wheels off the ground. Punctures left a Bad Taste.

Which? readers are cross because rascally car manufacturers provide a repair kit which is, “more expensive if you get a puncture because you’ll have to replace the sealant and the tyre each time you get a flat.” Each time. Scandalous. Furthermore, “Tyres can’t be repaired due to the chemicals in sealants. Water-based sealants, such as Honda’s, can be flushed out to allow a repair but only a franchised dealer can do this.” Disgrace. A Vauxhall Astra canister can cost £50 and a new tyre £148. “Conversely, fixing a simple puncture costs roughly £15.”

Which planet is Which? living on? The only people who seriously repair punctures nowadays must be driving very slowly on spindly tyres. Back in the Dark Ages we did drive until the canvas showed through. (I heard a TV Formula 1 commentator say that not long ago – he must have been a Dark Ages survivor too). But it was different with skinny tyres and slow speeds. “Give me a full-sized spare wheel anytime. I’ll put up with the weight and the slightly smaller boot space,” complain Which? readers. “I recently had a puncture and found my car has no spare wheel. Having to spend £200 on a new tyre was a bit much. A total rip-off especially if the tyre has thousands of miles left in it.” How do you suddenly discover your car has no spare wheel? Do people not look? Drivers like that should be condemned to drive on skinny Dark Ages tyres that last 50,000 miles so they will skid on the wet cobbles and get killed.

Nine Which? drivers out of ten have no idea how far we have come in tyre technology.

Pictures: TOP Continental Tyres 140th anniversary BELOW Wolseley 14 MIDDLE Dark Ages. Even record breakers carried spares. In 1924 Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird (a 350hp Sunbeam, here with stub exhausts) changed wheels between runs at Pendine. Boards prevent narrow tyres sinking into wet sands. Which? tyre test class winner. ContiSportContact3. BOTTOM Continental Tyres Cord: Moscow Fashion Designer creates a new trend. Pictures from splendid Newspress.

Historical anomaly

Speculation again over Jaguar reviving Daimler. Cars UK says the Chinese prefer something three-boxier than the XJ. Mandarins apparently like to sit in the back and the XJ rear is too cosy. Makes sense. Jaguar acquired Daimler in 1951 on being forbidden to extend its old factory at Foleshill, leased Browns Lane a wartime shadow factory still making Ferret armoured cars, so the move occupied most of 1951. This is me on the turret of 8 (Alma) Field Battery Royal Artillery's Ferret some time ago.

Daimler was an historical anomaly. Set up in England in 1893 by FR Simms to develop designs by Gottlieb Daimler, its Coventry Radford factory made Panhards based on Daimler’s patents, so British and German Daimler companies had little in common except Gottlieb Daimler as a director until 1898. After the Prince of Wales bought one in 1900, British-made Daimlers remained the choice of royals for the best part of half a century, despite the smokiness of Knight sleeve-valve engines. The Knight licence and overreaching itself financially were Daimler’s downfall and in 1910 it had to be rescued by Birmingham Small Arms (BSA), among whose directors was F Dudley Docker. One of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s sponsors (an upturned lifeboat named after him housed the expedition’s survivors), Docker’s interests ranged from firearms and motorcycles to railway rolling stock.

Daimlers of the 1930s were staid and not very fast but easy to drive, thanks to Wilson pre-selector gearboxes. Post-1945 the Conquest Century gave a good account of itself in saloon car races, a tribute to chassis engineering rather than power. The royal connection foundered following BSA chairman Dudley’s son Sir Bernard’s behaviour, and the gaudiness of Lady Docker’s limousines (Golden Zabra below) at Earls Court Motor Shows of the 1950s. The last straw was plastic-bodied SP250 sports cars of the 1960s, with a V8 designed by Edward Turner of Triumph motorcycles. He nearly developed an association with William Lyons in 1942, but the cars were not very good and renounced after the Jaguar takeover. Only the V8 engine survived.

Daimler independent production ended in 1968, lingering as Daimler versions of Jaguar saloons until the 1990s. Only the splendid DS420 limousine, based on a stretched Mark X remained, styled like the Docker Daimlers and a 1950s Empress Hooper. (Saloon below)

Browns Lane was given over to making Jaguars, the Radford factory survived until the 1990s but now both are gone and Jaguar is at another ex-wartime shadow factory, Castle Bromwich. Set up alongside an aerodrome by Morris Motors’ Nuffield Group in 1936 it made Spitfires and Lancasters. Control was quickly passed to Vickers-Armstrong and after the war it was taken over by Fisher and Ludlow, bombed-out of its own factory in Coventry. As Pressed Steel Fisher it became part of British Leyland, making bodies for Jaguar, which took it over completely in 1977. The aluminium XK is made there and it wouldn’t take much to make it a bit more upright, with a crinkly grille and a woody interior to match anything coming out of Stuttgart. The Chinese like their Deutsches Daimlers, so there is every reason to suppose they would take with equal enthusiasm to latter-day Dockery Daimlers.

Bentley for Bond

James Bond had an Aston Martin as a company car, but when he was spending his own money, and not that of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he had a Bentley. In Ian Fleming novels he had, “…one of the last 4½ Litre Bentleys with the supercharger by Amherst Villiers. Bond drove it hard and well and with an almost sensual pleasure.”

The DB5 (above with the original and best film Bond), in which he pursued Auric Goldfinger’s henchmen, was invented for the films. Ejection seats, concealed guns, bulletproof visors, the submarine Lotus, the ski-ing Aston V8 and the rocket-firing BMW Z8 were the work of special effects gadgeteers. Ian Fleming’s obsession with Bentleys began when Reuter’s sent him to report Le Mans.

Bentley had already won four times, but the 1930 race was spectacular, a duel between a 6½ Litre Speed Six driven by Woolf Barnato and Glen Kidston, and a 7.1 litre SS Mercedes-Benz. It was an unequal struggle. Yet to Fleming it was British Racing Green versus

Deutschland über alles

. Six Bentleys were up against a solitary Mercedes of Teutonic splendour and wailing supercharger, which lasted eight and a half hours before retiring. Team chief Alfred Neubauer said it had a flat battery but WO Bentley saw water and oil pouring out of the engine. Still, the great white racer, driven by Rudolph Caracciola and Christian Werner, left a deep impression on Fleming. Winning with the unsupercharged Speed Six proved the highlight of Barnato’s driving career. The sole winner of Le Mans on every occasion he took part, his three victories were ruinous for Bentley’s shaky finances. Barnato virtually owned the firm, but could not prevent its sale at a knockdown price to Rolls-Royce. Fleming re-ran the duel in

Moonraker

, 007’s 1930 4½ litre Bentley engaging in a thrilling pursuit of Hugo Drax’s Mercedes. They raced from London to the south coast and only treachery led to the Bentley being wrecked.

Superchargers fascinated Fleming and Amherst Villiers, the engineer who coerced WO Bentley into using them (see right). Bond’s cars sometimes had superchargers even when their real-life equivalents did not. He replaced the 4½ with another Bentley a, “…1953 Mark VI with an open touring body. It was battleship grey like the old 4½ Litre that had gone to its grave in a Maidstone garage, and the dark blue leather upholstery gave a luxurious hiss as he climbed in.”

Thunderball

, published in 1961, had Bond in, “… a Mark II Continental that some rich idiot had married to a telegraph pole.” Bond got Mulliner the coachbuilder (Fleming didn’t specify which Mulliner, but it was probably HJ) to rebuild it as a two-seater a bit like the late Lord David Strathcarron's (right).

He fitted a Mark IV engine with 9.2:1 compression, had it painted in rough, not gloss, battleship grey and upholstered it in black morocco. “She went like a bird and a bomb and Bond loved her more than all the women at present in his life rolled, if that were feasible, together.” The 007 of the novels was subtler. As Fleming’s alter ego Scottish-born Bond was successful with women, liked his Martinis shaken not stirred and was a superb golfer, gambler, lover and driver. His taste was impeccable whatever he drank, smoked, ate, drove or shot with. Fleming demonstrated his exquisite taste in a Rolex Oyster watch, Saxone golf shoes and Bond displayed complete mastery of unexpected skills. Being equal to any situation meant any old gun simply wouldn’t do. Bond used a Smith & Wesson .38 Centennial Airweight, and a Walther PPK 7.65mm with a Berns-Martin triple-draw holster. Fleming did not get his guns right first time and Bond had to change on instructions from “M”. A Glasgow gun expert Geoffrey Boothroyd pointed out to that no special agent worth his calibre would be seen dead with a .25 Beretta automatic. “A lady’s gun, and not really a nice lady”. Fleming repaid the compliment, portraying him in novels as Major Boothroyd, 007’s armourer. Later simply as “Q” Desmond Llewellyn played the role to perfection in the films.

In Fleming’s

Live and Let Die

Bond dismissed American cars as: “…just beetle-shaped dodgems in which you motor along with one hand on the wheel, the radio full on and the power-operated windows closed to keep out the draughts.” But his CIA friend Felix Leiter, “… had got hold of an old Cord. One of the few American cars with personality, and it cheered Bond to get into the low-hung saloon, to hear the solid bite of the gears and the masculine tone of the wide exhaust. Fifteen years old, he reflected, yet still one of the most modern cars in the world.”

Fleming was on shaky ground when he tried inventing a car. In Diamonds are Forever, Leiter introduced Bond to his Studillac explaining: “You couldn’t have anything better than this body. Designed by the Frenchman Raymond Loewy. Best designer in the world.” It was not complete invention. It was really a disguised Studebaker Avanti Fleming was coaxed into by the showy Loewy. The car was a disaster. I tested one in the 1960s, found Loewy’s plastic bodywork pretentious, and it suffered from nightmare axle tramp, slithering scarily in the wet on skinny tyres. An engraved plate reminded the driver that the tyres were suitable only for “ordinary motoring”. The Paxton belt-driven supercharger wafted a light breeze through the carburettor and it managed a perilous 120mph and 11mpg. It was no surprise Studebaker went out of business.

Bond must have been brave to cope with it, although Fleming thought it, “a bomb of a motor car. It cut my drive from London to Sandwich by 20 minutes, just on those Bendix disc brakes. The tremendous rattle of the exhaust note as that big supercharged V8 goes through maximum torque makes you feel young again.” The Avanti may have been a lapse of taste yet as a young reporter in the 1930s, Fleming had been devoted to cars. He owned a khaki-coloured “Flying” Standard, an unpromising start, but as a poorly paid journalist probably all he could afford. He was on firmer ground with the Bentley. The year after he covered Le Mans Fleming co-drove with Donald Healey in the Alpine Rally, winning their class in a 4.5 litre Invicta but in his later years Fleming grew cantankerous. Two women in a car, he averred, would sooner or later look into each other’s eyes. Cars with four women were dangerous because the two in the front would always turn round to those in the back. He disliked dangling dollies, tigers in the back window, steering wheel covers and string-backed driving gloves. He hated Ecosse plates, was against adorning a car with badges and would probably have regarded an Aston Martin as effete. My recommendation for Bond? Something like the Embiricos Bentley (below left) if he had to have a 1930s car. Or a worthy successor like the Continental GT Speed (below right). THE COMPLETE BENTLEY ebook

Mike Hawthorn and Rob Walker

The re-creation of Mike Hawthorn’s Jaguar was a bit of a surprise. Old racing cars have been rebuilt following fatal accidents but usually using bits from the original. This is a calculated reconstruction of a car destroyed on the Guildford bypass on 22 January 1959. The wreckage was taken to Jaguar, broken up and, according to Rob Walker, burnt before being scrapped.
Remaking it seemed almost mawkish until I read how it had been done by my fellow Goodwood Road Racing Club member Nigel Webb, as a tribute to the 1958 World Champion. Opened in 2009 Webb’s private museum is devoted to Hawthorn’s memory and his cars include 774RW the 1955 Le Mans winning D-type, together with much Hawthorn memorabilia. It took ten years to build the Mark 1 saloon, replica of Hawthorn’s road car on loan from Jaguar. Only the original’s badge bar and keys remain. The DVLC refused to reissue the VDU881, the original registration, but Webb persuaded them to auction 881VDU.
Speculation about Hawthorn’s accident persists. How astonishing that the best driver in the world should be killed so inauspiciously. It looked so careless. There were theories about the handling of the Jaguar, about a non-standard throttle control, about the Dunlop Duraband tyres, about the rain-soaked road. None was completely convincing.

On 25 August 1998 Rob Walker talked to Eoin Young and me, on condition that we never revealed exactly what he told us until after his death. We had both known him from racing days; he had been a sort of neighbour of mine in Sutton Veny and Eoin and I visited him at his home in Nunney, Somerset. He was still in good health at 80 but died four years later from pneumonia. In 1959 Rob was driving his Mercedes-Benz 300SL on the same road, at the same time as Hawthorn.
Robert Ramsey Campbell Walker, of Frome, Somerset, garage-owner at Dorking, told the Coroner’s inquest in Guildford Guildhall, that at 11.55 am on that Thursday he was driving his Mercedes car from Somerset towards Guildford. He came along the Hog's Back road, then joined the Guildford by-pass.
He stopped at the link road junction to see what traffic was approaching. He had seen in his mirror a dark green Jaguar coming up behind. It had to stop behind him. He had no notion who the driver was.
Witness pulled away and soon the Jaguar came alongside, about opposite Coombs' filling station. "The driver seemed to equal my speed, turned round and gave me a very charming smile. I recognised Mike Hawthorn and turned and waved back."
Asked by the coroner what his speed was then, witness replied: "I haven't any idea. I was in second gear." The coroner: Are you telling me seriously you have no idea of your speed? Witness repeated that he had no idea. Continuing, he said the Jaguar's speed was increasing all the time. "As he passed me I slackened my speed. There was a great deal of spray around and I did not want to be too close.
“I suddenly saw the back of his car break away slightly when he was 30 to 50 yards away. I was very surprised because I couldn't see any reason for it. I didn't think much about it; it was a most normal thing to happen to him and I expected him to correct it. He did not slow at all.
“My impression is that his speed increased all the time and the car didn't correct at all, but the tail went out farther and farther, and suddenly I realised it had got to a state of no return, when even Mike Hawthorn could not do anything about it.”
Rob told Eoin and me: “I had a telephone call last week but I couldn’t hear who the chap was. ‘You remember me?’ he said. It’s terribly embarrassing when somebody says that. I sort of half did and half didn’t. His accent was somewhere between American and Australian then he said: ‘I’m the policeman who took the evidence from you after Mike Hawthorn’s accident’.”
Rob remembered more about the accident than the policeman had wanted him to. “I think they were a bit suspicious about him at the station. He used to drink with Mike. They knew each other well, because he took evidence on Mike’s father’s accident and he knew Mrs Hawthorn. The first thing he had said to me before the inquest was: ‘What were you doing?’ I said, ‘Well Mike came up alongside. I saw a Jaguar behind me coming down from the Hogs Back onto the Guildford Bypass. And I said I wasn’t accustomed to having Jaguars behind me, so I sort of accelerated on to the Guildford Bypass. He came up alongside and waved and I saw it was Mike Hawthorn. I said we were having a bit of a dice down the road.”
The police officer was aghast. Rob continued: “He said to me, ‘Don’t ever mention that word again in your life. It’s against the law to dice on British roads and if anybody hears you say that, you’ve absolutely had it’. Well, I thought, this is a good man. From then on we along pretty well. Afterwards he obviously realised he’d done me a good turn. He used to borrow a car every weekend from the garage, until I think the big boys got on to what he was doing. The chief of police came and saw me and asked, ‘Does he come over here often,’ so I said oh I’ve seen him once or twice. I didn’t say any more.”

Goodwood tribute: Mike Hawthorn and Lofty England
Rob told us the officer was seconded to royal protection duties before leaving the police and going to America, where he remained until his wife died in 1985. “He was about my age. I said to him ‘I’ll bet you one person who isn’t alive and that’s the gardener who saw the whole thing and guessed the speed.’ He said ‘Well you’re bloody wrong, he is. He’s 90 years old.’”
Eoin asked Rob if the gardener had told the court how fast he was going?
Rob: “Well, you see, one thing the coroner wanted was to get the speed we were doing. He wasn’t being spiteful. Obviously he had to establish some sort of speed so he asked me. I said well when I was driving in the wet I didn’t spend time looking at my speedometer. I said the only thing I can tell you is that I’d just changed into top gear, when Mike passed. In the 1950s going into top gear to most people meant 40 to 50 mph, but in the 300SL I never changed into top under100 mph. Sometimes a bit more. Of course I didn’t tell him that.”

The inquest found the gardener: “He lived up above the Guildford Bypass, looked down and he, I suppose said he was a witness because he claimed, ‘Oh I heard them going down the road - terrible noises they were making, absolutely flat out,’ to which the coroner said, ‘Yes well we don’t want to hear about that, how fast were they going?’ The gardener’s estimate was, ‘Oh, they must have been going at least 80mph.’ It was probably the fastest speed he’d ever heard of. This was absolutely ideal, because if he’d said any slower, nobody would have believed him, and if he’d said any faster they would have said what bloody fools we had been. So 80mph was written into the book and that’s what it always was.”
Rob told us he never opened the newspapers afterwards. “Michael Cooper Evans went through them all when we did a book together, and they’ve lain in that drawer ever since the accident. I didn’t want to look at them. I know some of them said pretty horrible things.
Rob’s policeman friend told him more things he hadn’t known at the time. Apparently somebody had been going to make a film about Hawthorn. This hand throttle that he’d fitted was going to feature as an explanation of the accident. The film makers wanted photographs of it but as a policeman he considered it his duty not to say anything about it. Rob was not sure he didn’t make a bit of money out of it.
“The account of the hand throttle is all written in Chris Nixon’s book Mon Ami Mate. I asked if he (the police officer) had seen the hand throttle, and he said no, he hadn’t. He described what happened, ‘We put the remains of the Jaguar in Coombs’ Garage and we covered it with some sheet. The great mistake was that we didn’t put a guard on it all night. Somebody had been at it by next day.’ I asked did he think the person had removed the hand throttle, and he said yes he thought they had. He said another thing this person removed was Mike’s cap. That was definitely missing. Mike’s cap was very distinctive.”
Rob asked the policeman what had happened to the car. “Jaguar whipped it. They took it very smartly up to Jaguars, and this part I don’t know whether you can say or not because it is obviously very secret. He told me they burnt it.”

Rob discussed the accident with FRW “Lofty” England: “I’ve talked to Lofty about it many times, and he always sticks to the story of those Durabands. They held wonderfully in the wet, but when they did go they gave no warning whatsoever. Lofty said that’s what happened. What Nixon said in his book absolutely complies with what I said at the inquest. I told the Coroner’s court that the car was turned round and facing me, but the throttle was still wide open. I said I could hear the noise of it wide open. This seemed a most peculiar thing to me. But with a hand throttle it would be normal. And of course Lofty England and I completely disagree. Then the mechanic Nixon quotes in the book says that he fitted a hand throttle and somebody else who has interviewed him since says that he says he didn’t. The mechanic says he didn’t. Although Nixon said he told him that he did.”

GEM and Mr Toad

Motorist is rather a Kenneth Grahame word. Toad would have been called a motorist. Hear him, chanting with uplifted voice, ‘The motor-car went Poop-poop-poop, As it raced along the road, Who was it steered it into a pond? Ingenious Mr Toad, O, how clever I am! How clever, how clever, how very clev----‘ until about two fields off he saw the chauffeur in his leather gaiters with two large rural policemen. ‘O my!’ he gasped as he panted along, ‘what an ASS I am! What a CONCEITED and heedless ass! Swaggering again! Shouting and singing songs again! Sitting still and gassing again! O my! O My! O my!’
What ho, then, for the Guild of Experienced Motorists. It describes itself as a breakdown operator and road safety charity, GEM Motoring Assist and doesn’t want the government to raise motorway speeds to 80mph. CEO, David Williams comments, “I simply cannot understand this. We believe it would be a disaster. There are very obvious road safety implications including drivers having less time to react at higher speeds. Given the road safety record is currently heading in the wrong direction, this alone is a good enough reason not to raise the limit. Then there’s the environmental aspect. An increase in speed will have a huge influence on our fuel consumption and emissions. It’s terrifying enough to be broken down on a Motorway with cars going at 70mph, imagine them all travelling almost 15% faster?”
Imagine. When GEM was established in 1932 as the Company of Veteran Motorists, its badge was a V with a little star in the middle, with a figure denoting how many years you had driven without an accident. Its mindset doesn’t seem to have changed much.
Alice would have known what to do.
GEM supports Alex Attwood, environment minister in Northern Ireland, who wants to cut the blood alcohol limit from 80mg/100ml to 50mg/100ml. It believes that such a result would, “… hopefully cut some ice with David Cameron and Nick Clegg and pave the way to reducing the allowable levels in the UK too.”
Mr Williams claims that reducing the limit would, “bring the UK into line with the rest of the EU and indeed much of the world.” However raising the speed limit on motorways would also, “bring the UK into line with the rest of the EU and indeed much of the world.” He can not press his rationale both ways. Also one wonders where he gets the notion that our road safety record is heading in the wrong direction. Everybody else agrees the opposite.
I am suspicious of lobbyists who claim measures would, “… save as many as 168 lives every year and prevent thousands of injuries.” They bandy phrases like, “overwhelming evidence,” when what they mean is “I know what’s good for you.” On the speed limit issue GEM claims, “… this move is being made to deflect the real issues that cause delays in journeys such as road works and potholes.”
O, how clever I am! How clever, how clever, how very clev----‘. ‘O my!, what an ASS I am! What a CONCEITED and heedless ass! Swaggering again! Shouting and singing songs again! Sitting still and gassing again! O my! O My! O my.
Members’ benefits include a regular magazine, free literature and advice and discounts on insurances and other services.

GEM: The archetypal back seat driver. 1906 9HP Vauxhall experiment that did not get far.

Jaguar E-Type Anniversary

This is FSN 1, an E-type I drove often, with Jimmy Stewart, Jackie's elder brother. Like the Sprite in the next blog, it is at Turnberry for the RSAC Concours d'elegance
1961 JAGUAR E-type 3.8 FHC: From The Jaguar File, revised for EBook
The E-type epitomised the classic sports touring car. Introduced at the Geneva Motor Show, in the Parc des Eaux Vives within sight of the famous jet d’eau, it created shock-waves throughout the motor industry. The social elite of Geneva queued up - literally - to be whisked up a hill-climb course by test driver Norman Dewis and Jaguar public relations chief and accomplished D-type racer, Bob Berry. So many people turned up that the police were called to keep order.
The E-type looked the quintessence of quality, its UK price was less than £1500, and it was expected to reach 150mph (241.39kph). Officially the successor to the XK series, it evoked the lines and style of a D-type, slimmed and refined to create a beautiful car, which became an enduring symbol of the 1960s. More attainable than a Ferrari, more charismatic than a Rolls-Royce, racier than a Mercedes-Benz, the E-type stamped its image on a generation and its shape became an icon of the so-called swinging sixties. Its basis was straightforward. Both the open and closed versions had a cockpit made of small spot-welded steel pressings, with the independent rear suspension carried in a cradle underneath.
E2A, the Briggs Cunningham prototype that had raced at Le Mans, showed what had motivated thinkers at Jaguar, who wanted something that did double duty as a sports-racing lookalike and a practical road car. The front was constructed of Reynolds 541 square section steel tubing containing the engine and carrying the front suspension. A smaller tubular sub-frame was bolted to the front, supporting the radiator and front bonnet anchor. The bonnet hinged upwards for access to the engine and front suspension, and comprised the entire nose-section with complicated ducts and electrical connections. It was an elaborate and expensive item of equipment, as anybody unfortunate enough to damage one soon found out.
The Autocar and The Motor road testers managed the required top speeds, but only just. A certain amount of duplicity emerged after production E-types seldom got much past 140mph. The model’s reputation was sullied through overheating of the inboard rear disc brakes. Yet it changed the world of the sports car, setting standards in ride and handling that lasted for years, banishing for ever the notion that fast sports cars should feel “difficult”. It arrived at the dawn of the motorway age in Britain, when people could still dream of dashing from one end of the country to the other at unfettered speed. Timid ministers of transport, desperate to impose motorway speed limits, were still years off.

Announced at the Geneva Motor Show in March, 1961, one of the first E-types I drove was a works press car, taken to Scotland for the Kelvin Hall Motor Show, that I drove to the offices of The Hamilton Advertiser to have it photographed. Jaguar apprentice Clive Martin came with me to make sure I could handle the power.INTRODUCTION 1961 produced to 1964.
BODY coupe; 2-doors, 2-seats; dry weight 1143kg (2519.8lb) kerb weight 1226kg (2702lb).
ENGINE 6-cylinders, in-line; front; 87mm x 106mm, 3781cc; compr 9:1, 8.1 optional; 197.6kW (265bhp) @ 5500rpm; 52.26kW (70bhp)/l; 348.7Nm (257.2lbft) @ 4000rpm.
ENGINE STRUCTURE two chain-driven ohc; aluminium cylinder head, cast iron block; 3 2in SU HD8 carburettors; Lucas ignition; SU electric fuel pump; 7-bearing crankshaft.
TRANSMISSION rear wheel drive; 25.3cm (10in) Borg and Beck sdp clutch; 4-speed synchromesh gearbox; hypoid final drive 3.31:1; options 4.09, 3.77, 3.27:1; Powr-Lok limited-slip diff.
CHASSIS steel monocoque centre, bolted tubular front sub-frames; ifs by wishbones, coil springs; anti roll bar; irs by lower wishbone, upper driveshaft link, radius arms, twin coil spring/telescopic damper units; anti roll bar; hydraulic servo disc 27.9cm (11in) front 25.4cm (10in) inboard rear brakes; rack and pinion steering; 63.3l (14gal) fuel tank; Dunlop RS5 6.40-15 tyres, optional Dunlop Racing R5 6.00-15 front, 6.50-15 rear; wire wheels.
DIMENSIONS wheelbase 244cm (96in); track 127cm (50in); length 444cm (175in); width 165cm (65in); height 122cm (48in); ground clearance 12.7cm (5in); turning circle right 12.3m (40.4ft), left 11.7m (38.4ft).
EQUIPMENT spare wheel and toolkit in recessed floor of boot; optional HMV radio; chrome wire wheels £60 21; Sundym glass in hatchback.
PERFORMANCE maximum speed 242.1kph (150.4mph); 37kph (23mph) @ 1000rpm on RS5, 39.58kph (24.6mph) on R5 tyres; 0-100kph (62mph) 6.9sec; fuel consumption 15.8l/100km (17.9mpg).
PRICE £2197. PRODUCTION 7669.