Wilkie on left at Charterhall with Ian Stewart, centre, and Stirling Moss. (Picture taken by Bill Henderson © www.thebillhendersoncollection.co.uk
I had an early run-in with Wilkie, Ecurie Ecosse’s, “wizard engine tuner”. David Murray engaged me to edit News from the Mews a catchy title, he thought, for the Ecurie Ecosse Association’s newsletter. I knew a good shop window when I saw one and enjoyed breezy weekly visits to Edinburgh. NftM went out to 7 or 8 thousand in Britain and proved especially welcome among Scottish ex-pats. In Edinburgh the Association was firmly socially upper middle-class. The President was youthful car enthusiast Lord Bruce, heir to Earl Elgin of the marbles. Murray contributed to the magazine, cheerfully identifying its small staff as the BYTs (Bright Young Things). His 1920s and 1930s vernacular was pure Waugh and Wodehouse; there was something in his smiling optimistic Betjmanesque banter a later age would have found patronising, maybe embarrassing. But yes, the BYTs were nearly all well brought-up Edinburgh gels Miss Jean Brodie would have recognised at once.
As soon as I was appointed, Wilkie invited me round. He produced heavy press cuttings books from the 1930s, when he mechanicked for the Evanses Bellvue Garage in Wandsworth, and drove Billy Cotton’s ERA. I was only editor of News from the Mews, not yet motoring correspondent of The Sunday Times and found Wilkie boring, a show-off. The material could have filled a book and in due course did. I was only gathering material for a modest feature.
Ever since his Brooklands days anybody wearing a press armband was grist to Wilkie’s mill. He had certainly impressed Bill Boddy veteran editor of Motor Sport covering a 1950s Charterhall who gushed: “Try as Moss did in (Tommy Wisdom’s) XK120C Ian Stewart of Ecurie Ecosse won by 15.6sec, setting fastest lap. Clearly Wilky (sic) Wilkinson has given the Scottish car something others haven’t got”.
It wasn’t true. Moss was great but Ian Stewart was his match. Boddy had written a lot of Wilkie’s press cuttings, loved anybody connected with Brooklands, but this time he was wrong. Ian Stewart told me Ecurie Ecosse had often been at a disadvantage at Silverstone or Goodwood but at Charterhall he could turn the tables. There were three big corners, Lodge, Paddock Bend and Tofts. “Moss went wide every lap at Paddock because he didn’t know the circuit. I just went round on the right line and overtook him.”
IMM Stewart: Ecosse’s best driver of the founding 1950s
Wilkie was an object lesson in lobbying. His assiduous private public relations campaign had been so successful for so long he had created his own reputation. Murray paid him generous tributes, carefully designed to reflect back on himself. Murray’s “wizard tuner” description was much too 1930s, I was right to be suspicious, and Wilkie’s reputation at Jaguar collapsed along with Murray’s. An accumulation of dud cheques and broken promises did for both of them.
Next Time: Can-Am; Jaguar E-type in Merchiston Mews