From the Archive 019
Courtney Edwards OBE, Daily Mail motoring correspondent takes cine film of the Jaguar achievement.
RMV Sutton was test driver at Jaguar for only 14 months yet his place in Jaguar history is secure. On 30 May 1949 he drove an XK120 on the Jabbeke-Ostend motorway at 132.596mph. Jaguars had been cad’s cars; now they were classics. The Jaguar File recalls them.
Even for a professional, Belgian National Production Car records were daunting, “I had secret misgivings, bearing in mind my fastest-ever had been 110mph on a Lea-Francis at Brooklands 21 years previously.” Early one morning, Sutton took the XK to a 5-mile straight near Coventry, “It was the car that put my mind at rest as I found it delightful to handle.”
Roland Manners Verney Sutton (1895-1957) was Jaguar’s chief experimental test driver from February 1948 until April 1951. Norman Dewis OBE took over with a grander title, chief test development engineer, and a wider-ranging brief. In Paul Skilleter’s Norman Dewis of Jaguar, Sutton is portrayed as, “unique, with a hangdog look, a cigarette constantly drooping from the side of his mouth. He had aristocratic connections and a Harrow education.” Indeed, Jaguar’s first test driver was a cousin of the Duke of Rutland.
Roland or Rowland (although often referred to as Ron) Sutton was born at Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire into a well-to-do household. He was apprenticed to Clayton and Shuttleworth of Lincoln, which made agricultural machinery and steam traction engines. Its chairman Colonel Frank Shuttleworth at age 57 married pretty 23 year old Dorothy Clotilda, a vicar’s daughter of Old Warden, home of the aircraft collection set up by their son, racing driver and pilot Richard Shuttleworth (1909-1940).
RMV Sutton joined Rolls-Royce at Derby in the Operations Planning Department, buying a 1921 sports Hillman for £650. It was a lot for, “a primitive two-seater with no starter, screen-wiper or other amenities,” which could barely manage 65mph. He competed in hill-climbs and speed trials against Raymond Mays’s outwardly identical Quicksilver, of which Sutton concluded, “Judging by the difference in performance its innards must have been modified.”
Sutton exchanged the Hillman for the 1923 Motor Show Alvis 12/50 and with works support found success at Aston Clinton. Updated over three seasons it gained an official entry for the 1926 Coupe Boillot at Boulogne where Alvis won the team prize against French factory opposition. Sutton was grateful for works mods that included a high ratio “solid” back axle and Rudge-Whitworth wheels, which improved Brooklands lap times but ruined tyres. He reverted to a differential for hill-climbs. The only preparation needed to win the Essex 100-Mile Handicap was removing wings and windscreen.
Sutton family wealth could not sustain RMV’s motor racing however, so it was with relief that he joined Lea-Francis in 1927 as chief tester and competition driver. Sutton raced the Cozette-blown Meadows 4-cylinder pushrod car, which developed into the production Hyper Lea-Francis that he and Frank Hallam took to an 80.6mph Class F 12-Hour record at Brooklands. Teamed with Kaye Don, George Eyston and Sammy Newsome, they won 1928 Ulster Tourist Trophy.
https://dovepublishing.co.uk/titles
JIM CLARK: Tribute to a Champion by Eric Dymock
MG Classics by Eric Dymock. Model by Model, Books 1, 2 and 3
Sutton’s next job was with Morris Motors Engines Branch at Gosforth Street Coventry Experimental Department. He did road and track tests of the MG Tigress, racing version of the 6-cylinder 18/80 and in a letter to Chris Barker, owner of a surviving Tigress, wrote “I clocked about 95mph at Brooklands, but 100mph, which was the target, eluded us. MG blamed the engine, but we asserted that the bhp was adequate to propel the car at the requisite speed, were it not for losses in the chassis. I made an unfortunate remark, which came to the ears of Cecil Kimber, ‘The engine was contaminated by its surroundings.’ This, I think, put the lid on it, as after two prototypes MG tested the remaining three by themselves.”
Sutton raced a Type 40 Bugatti and a Brooklands Riley Nine. In 1932, with CM Harvey, he won the Rootes Cup for leading at the end of the first day of the Junior Car Club’s 100-mile race at the Weybridge track. Yet he found testing experimental armoured fighting vehicles more fulfilling, so during World War 2 moved to Daimler. Here his Triumph road car survived two bombs but was blown by a third into the drawing office of the Coventry works, roofless from an earlier air raid. The authorities gave him £75 to cover the loss.
The work brought him into contact with the Ministry of Supply, which in 1946 invited Daimler to sample a military Type 82 Volkswagen. Sutton’s report on the captured military Kubelwagen was unflattering, perturbed perhaps by a warning of demolition charges found in Afrika Korps’ cast-offs. A British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee pronounced the Volkswagen a design, “of no special brilliance apart from certain details and not to be regarded as an example of first-class modern design to be copied by the motor industry.” Sutton was prescient though, “A more refined version of this type might have possibilities.”
Sutton owned a Rolls-Royce Wraith and Mark VI Bentley, describing them as, “examples of British engineering and craftsmanship that stand supreme.” His research extended to running an experimental electric car borrowed from the Brush company. He ran it for months, “at what I imagined was a negligible outlay, but received a shock of no mean voltage when my electricity bill arrived at the end of the quarter.” The acceleration up to 10mph he found fantastic, “but beyond that it tailed off and the maximum speed was no more than 20mph.” Gradients reduced it to a crawl at a rate he found never varied no matter how steep.
RMV Sutton joined Jaguar in 1948, testing tested the 2½ and 3½ Litre saloons with Walter Hassan, moving on to Mark VII prototypes with pushrod engines and then XK120s. Some early development work on the XK was done with the 1½ litre 4-cylinder twin overhead camshaft engine and air-strut suspension, “but there was never any intention to market this car. Only one prototype was built.” Norman Dewis claimed that Sutton’s nickname, “Soapy” was the result of his coming to work with shaving cream on his face. Others thought him perpetually begrimed and unwashed, like his overalls.
Sutton and Jack Lea, who had known Lofty England and Wally Hassan at ERA, needed to be sure that HKV500 would comfortably exceed 120mph and arranged a reconnaissance trip to Belgium. When they got back, they reported to Ernest Rankin, Jaguar’s public relations director, that it could. Rankin, however, was concerned over journalists calling to find out what Jaguar was up to in Belgium.
Sutton was forced to own up. They had popped into The Steering Wheel Club in Brick Street off Park Lane, “for a quick one,” on the way home, its clientele composed of journalists and racing drivers. The Belgian recce also upset the formidable Joska Bourgeois, the local Jaguar importer, who demanded to know why she had not been in on the secret.
On 18th May 1949 Rankin informed selected journalists and on the 30th they flew in a chartered Sabena Douglas DC3 from Heathrow, to watch HKV500 chassis number 670002, on the still incomplete Ostend motorway. Painted white to look better in photographs, with a cowl over the passenger seat and undertray to improve aerodynamics, the Royal Belgian Automobile Club timed it over a flying mile and kilometre. To prove it was no fluke it also did 126.954mph with windscreen, hood and sidescreens erect.
Accurate, painstaking, fearless yet unassuming according to a tribute in The Motor, RMV Sutton left Jaguar and went back to what he loved, as Chief Development Tester of the Car and Armoured Fighting Vehicle Division at Alvis. He died after a short illness on June 29th,1957.
