“As long as I can get there on time without breaking the car,” Champion imagined Clark “changed his cattle truck for a racing car.”
Champion magazine on 22 year-old Jim Clark’s chilling experience. Border Reivers entered a race in Yorkshire but didn’t have a trailer, so loaded its D-type on to Clark’s farm lorry. It was a frosty April 1958 so the radiator had been drained, and half-way to Berwick-on-Tweed the engine seized. Clark told Graham Gauld: “The D-type was unloaded. Ian Scott Watson was driving his Porsche to Full Sutton, so I wrapped myself in sweaters and coats, set off into a snowstorm and drove it to York. Went through Newcastle at 11 pm making a whale of a din,”
He not only got to his first race with TKF9, but also took a place in the record books. Jim Clark was first sports car driver averaging over 100mph for a full of a British circuit. The contrast with bumpy Borders Charterhall was profound. Full Sutton was a long 3.2 mile round and in perfect condition. The American Air Force had just spent a quarter of a million pounds resurfacing it.
Nichael Cooper photograph of Eric Dymock driving Jim Clark’s Reivers’ D-type.
TKF9 was 13 years old when I got my hands on it. Soon after Clark’s death at Hockenheim, Andrew Whyte, of the exemplary Jaguar press office, organised a day’s testing for me at Oulton Park. Autocar ran a feature that I have included in Jaguar Centenary Book One. “A good D-type is such a collector's item that when one does come on the market, upwards of £5,000 is likely to change hands,” I wrote. Well, it was 1968. Add a few noughts to that now. Bryan Corser was seventh owner of TKF 9, the only one of his collection retaining its original registration number, kept for its historical association. It was originally sold by Henly's of Manchester to Gillie Tyrer, then to Alex McMillan, Murkett Brothers when it was raced (and crashed more than once) by Henry Taylor before the Reivers bought it for promising young newcomer Clark.
The Eric Dymock Vintage Archive Jaguar Centenary Book One is dedicated to the memory of Andrew John Appleton Whyte.
