Silver Arrows land on Goodwood

So, the Second World War is really over. Goodwood welcomes the Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union grand prix cars to the Revival in September. It is really about time. Westhampnett, satellite to Tangmere during the Battle of Britain, will echo to the noise of engines made by its adversaries and 75 years after their first appearance in the UK, it promises to be one of the most spectacular historic vehicle events ever.
(Top, Nick Mason drives the V12 Auto Union, above and below, W 125 Mercedes-Benz of 1937-1938)
It is 75 years since their first time in Britain and 74 since their second. This was 1938 for a Donington Grand Prix arranged on 2 October, but the teams had to pack their cars back into their transporters and retreat to Harwich for a ferry back to Germany as the Munich Crisis deepened. Only after Mr Chamberlain brought back his piece of paper was the race rescheduled for 22 October.

Although effectively British Grands Prix the 1937 and 1938 races were called the Donington Grand Prix. Dear old RAC, member of the Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR founded 1904), was chary about allowing provincial Donington to use the title. Even though Fred Craner, of the Derby and District Motor Club, and JG Shields, landowner, managed to persuade Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union to race against what were essentially local amateurs, the RAC couldn’t quite persuade itself that it should be a British Grand Prix.

Auto Union won both races, Bernd Rosemeyer in 1937, Tazio Nuvolari in 1938 after some disarray in the Mercedes camp.

D-type Auto Union, reconstruction of Nuvolari's winner.
There could be ten Silver Arrows at Goodwood. There were only six at Donington in 1937, eight in 1938 and they will compete with some of the also-rans, ERAs, Maseratis, Rileys, Bugattis and MGs. They will overwhelm them just as they did three quarters of a century ago. The German cars have appeared occasionally in Britain since then, John Surtees drove an Auto Union at Silverstone in 1990, along with Neil Corner in a Mercedes-Benz, but the prospect of seeing - and hearing – them all together is a heady one. Mercedes-Benz W25, W125, W154 and W165, plus the extravagantly rebuilt Auto Union Types C and D will take part

Perhaps it will make the Revival a touch less jingoistic. Motor racing at Goodwood was, essentially, a creation of the 1950s; it was only happenstance that it took place on a wartime airfield. Douglas Bader (below) and his brave contemporaries would be agreeably entertained by the most spectacular grand prix cars of all time on their old “perry track”.

Bentley, Jaguar meet on the Stairs

Jaguar going upstairs will soon meet Bentley coming down. The price ladder is becoming congested around £100,000 and next year’s bottom Bentley will cost not much more (relatively) than a top Jaguar. In 1960 a Bentley Continental was £8,000; a special equipment Jaguar XK150 £2,000. Next spring’s V8 Continental will be about £120,000. Jaguars are edging towards £100,000 - more if you add on all the add-ons.
Sleek Continental (above) XK150 (below)


It’s no surprise. They have been shadowing one another for 75 years. In 1937 Rolls-Royce and Bentley chief development engineer WA Robotham was deeply impressed with a 3½ Litre SS Jaguar. He reported to Robert Harvey-Bailey, chief engineer of the chassis division in Derby, that the engine was almost exactly like one proposed for a still secret Bentley. “The crankshaft has 2½in journals and 2in pins, exactly the dimensions we have in the (Rolls-Royce) Wraith.” It was also more compact and lighter than the Bentley and, “appeared appreciably smoother. In order to pick up 10 horse power at the peak of the power curve Jaguar has gone to the trouble of fitting two entirely independent exhaust systems.”

Jaguars looked like Bentleys. William Lyons styled them so that they earned the soubriquet “Bentleys of Wardour Street.” It was not meant to be a compliment. Buyers could not believe how Jaguar managed it at the price. The secret was William Lyons’ parsimony. Robotham bought an SS for assessment, describing it as “disconcertingly good, better than a 3½ Litre Bentley for acceleration and within 1mph of the 4¼ Bentley in top speed.” Its duplex exhaust had less back pressure than the Bentley’s, cost more to make and was so quiet Robotham instructed his engineers to match it. The chassis was not as stiff as the huge Rolls-Royce Phantom but better than a Wraith. The Jaguar was dismantled, Rolls-Royce praising every component save the fuel tank, which it thought flimsy. There was nothing to show that low cost had been achieved by, “abbreviated specification, simplification, or poor quality materials”.

Bentleys had a brake servo, one-shot chassis lubrication and gaitered and lubricated road springs, de luxe items accounting for less than 2 per cent of its chassis price. The question was why a Bentley should cost twice as much as a Jaguar. * “We have so far accounted for less than 30 per cent of the difference. We are of the opinion that the remaining 70 per cent can be accounted for by good manufacturing (and) sound purchasing of parts.”

A lot has happened since 1937 but over the years Jaguar made great efforts to give itself the air of a Bentley. Under Ford it also tried to make itself a large-volume manufacturer in the mould of BMW or Audi. It failed, even with perfectly good products, like the Mondeo-based X-type. If Detroit hadn’t meddled with the styling it might have been better. Now, with Indian investment, Jaguar is on an engineering-led endeavour for quality and exclusiveness. Spiralling prices are taking it, along with Land Rover, to profit that has eluded it for years.

Up-market crinkly net grille on Jaguar
At the same time Bentley, now Audi-inspired, is wisely widening its range from the heady heights of the £226,000 Mulsanne and £150,000-ish W12 Continental, downwards to something people can afford. £120,000 is still a lot but it is no more than the price of a modest saloon for one of the family. Bentley is unlikely to compromise quality and this new twin-turbo of 500bhp places it firmly in Jaguar territory. The XK Coupe Portfolio I tested the other week was a V8 of 515bhp at £70,860. The supercharged XJ Supersports I had the week before was £94,000 with a piano black interior that could have graced a Bentley. At £91,050 the XK Supersport will be in Bentley V8 territory.

Up-market grikly net grille on Bentley.
Rather like Robotham some three quarters of a century ago, you would be hard-pressed to make a distinction in driving quality. Speed, refinement, gadgetry and handling were beyond reproach. The Jaguars were disappointing in road noise; press departments invariably equip demonstrators with stupid low-profile tyres that make them all sound like cars of half the price – see the previous Audi blog for the difference well proportioned tyres make. Assuming that the approaching V8 is in the same idiom as my last test W12 Bentley the two must, at last, be chasing the same customers.
* Robotham was thinking chassis prices. 1937 Jaguar 3½ Litre saloon £445. Bentley 4¼ Litre chassis £1,150; 4-door saloon £1,510, nearly the 1:4 proportional difference of 1960.

Four Great Jaguars

Not many people in the 1960s ran to more than one Jaguar. A day at Oulton Park with four of them was a heady prospect, especially when they were all such landmarks in Jaguar history. This Autocar jacket celebrated Jaguar’s first post-war sports car, first Le Mans winner, TKF 9 Jim Clark’s Border Reivers’ D-type, and the latest E-type.
Bryan Corser of Shrewsbury had an XK120, a C-Type, D-Type and a 420G, replaced with an E-Type for a memorable test day. Archetypal Jaguar PRO, the matchless Andrew Whyte arranged it. Corser’s enthusiasm was boundless and Andrew knew he would trust us with his cars for a day, so long as he could join us. Corser, I wrote, was not collecting Jaguars for profit. Not then anyway. “Selling them never entered his head. You don’t expect to make a profit from your Hardy rod or Purdey gun or Dunhill pipe. You expect to fish with it, shoot with it, or smoke it*. Bryan Corser’s pleasure in his Jaguars came from driving them. They were all taxed and used on the road, the XK most often.”

From the original Autocar feature of 20 June 1968, reproduced in Sports Car Classics Vol2:
Each (of Corser’s cars was) in keen mechanical trim, faultlessly maintained and polished to the hilt – everything is polished, burnished, painted or chromed. Even the hydraulic piping on the D and the screen wash jar top gleam with chrome. But the cars are no museum pieces.
The XK 120 is, if you can apply the words to a car in such superb condition, a perfectly ordinary XK 120. Its only divergence from standard is 2in SU carburettors instead of 1½in, and XK150 tail lamps which are slightly too big. Otherwise it is much like the original XK 120, introduced 20 years ago to test public reaction to a twin-overhead-camshaft 6-cylinder engine. Jaguar thought this might be a useful engine for their Mark VII if people liked it. The sports car was to gauge reaction but created such a sensation that the initial plan to run off a modest 200 was quickly abandoned. The first cars had aluminium bodies but Pressed Steel was quickly recruited to make lots of steel bodies for the orthodox box section chassis. It seems almost a quaint idea now that you could remove an XK’s body, laying bare a sturdy frame that kicked up over the live back axle. The front independent is by torsion bars and the steering Burman recirculating ball.
The heart of the XK 120 is the thread that holds this Jaguar story together - the XK engine. Six cylinders, twin-overhead cams, a seven bearing crankshaft, 83 mm x 106 mm and a curious stroke-bore ratio of 1.28:1. This was probably on account of the change from the original XJ design, which suffered from poor low speed torque as a 3.2litre and had the stroke summarily lengthened. Capacity was 3442cc, the bhp 160 at 5200 rpm and you could specify 7:1 or 8:1 compression. It was a sophisticated power unit for Pool petrol. Rationing was still in force when it appeared. Polished cam covers came only on racing cars and125 mph was for aeroplanes; yet here these were on sale at £988.
Nine hundred and eighty-eight pounds. If you could reintroduce it as a reproduction antique today, you might be in business.

Memorable moment: The author drives TKF 9 for Autocar's feature.
Re-registered SVM 972, Bryan Corser’s XK120 was built in the early part of 1953. He is the fourth owner and has fitted a brake servo, modified the cooling system, overhauled the suspension, rewired it and “tidied” the engine “with a little chrome”.
Climb aboard the XK and you are surprised to find such a low car really has quite a high floor. One is unaccustomed nowadays to sitting on top of a chassis, with your legs stretching forward horizontally to long thin pedals on stalks, which come up through the toe-board. The enormous wheel is close to the chest, the right arm overflows the cutaway door and one realizes what a revolution the unitary hull has created. By contrast, the hump for the gearbox seems modest, because most of it is decently buried in the chassis. The shallow boot is testimony to Jaguar’s indifference to the baggage needs of sports car owners, which persists even with the open E-type. Here the reason is different, the rear axle of an XK needs space to bump up and down; it is the bulky independent rear on the E that steals the volume.
When you think that the XK120 was conceived half a generation ago, it is chastening to reflect that you can almost reach the limit of speed laid down by our legislators, without getting out of second gear. Third is good for 90mph (144.8kph), which came up easily on the back straight at Oulton. The acceleration is progressive rather than swift. A contemporary magazine’s 0-100mph time on a new XK120 was 27.3sec, its top speed 124mph (199.6kph), and standing quarter-mile 17sec.
At Oulton the steering felt heavy. You were almost glad about the closeness of the wheel so that you could pull from the shoulders and there was some kick-back reaction from the road. Elegant “long arm” driving positions arrived only with much lighter steering than this. Likewise the brakes need a firm push although they pulled the car up well. The axle is firmly located—it doesn’t jiggle over bumps. Even accelerating hard in second round Esso Bend, it sticks to the ground without spinning the inside wheel. There is little body roll, perhaps emphasised by the (for a sports car) comparatively high driving position. With such basic understeer, you can poke the back round with the throttle, although it is not the sensitive modern sort of car you can set sliding and catch when you want to. The borderline between keeping on the rails and a sharp, rapid breakaway was close. The ride is firm but fairly level; there is very little pitching, and the structure feels stiff with hardly a suggestion of scuttle shake.
Mercifully, the old gearbox has been abandoned. Drive an XK and you wonder how it survived for so long. You need the old Jaguar ‘pause-one-two’ between changes to prevent clashing the gears. Not because the mechanism was worn but because the constant-load synchromesh was never very strong. The clutch helps compensate, with a light, short travel. Drum brakes may have been a weakness of the car and the addition of a servo seems to have helped matters. They stood up well to some fairly brisk work at Oulton; smelt a bit, but that could have been due to the linings having recently been renewed.
Start up the XK 120 and there is no mistaking what it is. The characteristic ‘thrum’ must have helped create the Jaguar mystique. It is not high-revving and in XK 120 form the power won’t jerk your head back, but it does produce energy all the way up the range.
The XK 120 was a classic. Elegant and gentlemanly, the flowing lines were spoiled with the XK 140. The 150 restored some of the panache although the crisp silhouette had gone. It was well mannered, docile and quite, quite unlike the car that really established Jaguar as a racing marque, the XK120C.
Bryan Corser’s was the last production C-type to leave the factory. It has chassis number XKC 050 and (like the 120) was completed in 1953, to be followed only by the 1953 Le Mans cars. With 220bhp and those historic disc brakes Rolt and Hamilton won, raising the race record by 9mph and making the first ever 100mph race average. Moss and Walker were second, Whitehead and Jimmy Stewart (Jackie’s brother) fourth behind a Cunningham… Continued in Sports Car Classics, a full length reproduction in Part 2; Jaguar to Yamaha

Kindle ISBN 978-0-9569533-1-5. £4.80
Ebook ISBN 978-0-9569533-2-2. £4.80
*Hardy, Purdey and Dunhill appeared in an advertisement for the AC Ace in 1961, under a heading, “Yes, there’s a best in everything.” It declared “He smokes a Dunhill pipe, fishes with a Hardy rod, shoots with a Purdey gun and drives an AC car.” The implication was that an AC was suitable for nobility and gentlemen of impeccable taste. I used the phrase again later, changing “Purdey” to “Holland and Holland” on Jackie Stewart’s say-so.

What Jaguar owes The Standard

A long way from Canley. Jaguar XJ Supersports

“Jaguar owed a lot to The Standard.” Comment from an old Midlands car man, recalled the other day when I was given the engaging Review of the Standard Motor Club. Hard to believe it’s an all-but-forgotten make that used to be one of the biggest motor manufacturers in Britain. It was, literally, a standard-bearer in Coventry. So as a reminder of what Jaguar owed Standard, here is a reminder from Dove Digital's

https://dovepublishing.co.uk/jaguar.

William Lyons, still only 28, negotiated a lease at £1200 a year with the option to purchase, of a former shell-filling factory at Holbrook Lane, Foleshill on the Whitmore Park Estate Coventry. It was signed up on 8 October 1928 and 30 of his Blackpool employees joined in a move completed by November. Less than a year later, on 29 September, the firm confidently took up its option, with a mortgage on 80,000 square feet (7432 square metres) for £18,000 with the Coventry Permanent Building Society. It looked like bravura, after the Wall Street Crash a month later endangered small specialists but Swallow, still cocksure, started cars of its own design with chassis frames and engines supplied by Standard Motor Company. At the Olympia Motor Show it flaunted coachwork on Fiat, Standard and Swift.

For Standard Motor Company it was good business. From 1931 it supplied unique items for the 6-cylinder SS1 and 4-cylinder SS2, including a specially lowered chassis frame Standard never used itself. The 6-cylinder had a strong seven main bearing crankshaft, which became the basis for SS and Jaguar engines for many years. Swallow took the sidecar business to Coventry in autumn 1928, dropping “sidecar” from the title, and in 1931 relegated manufacture to a mere department at the new Swallow Coachbuilding Company. Lyons had few regrets, admitting later that the firm had never made much of what he called ‘real money’ from sidecars.

The relationship with Standard prospered. Captain John Paul Black (1895-1965), who had taken charge from founder Reginald William Maudslay (1871-1934) in 1929, had machinery to make engines and chassis frames but no premium-priced model of his own. The arrangement improved Standard’s economies of scale and Black privately believed he would be able to buy Swallow out in due course. On 9 December 1932 Swallow bought two more blocks of factory and a sawmill for £8000 and changed its banker from William’s and Deacon’s to Lloyd’s. The first SS range was introduced, and in 1933 an SS took part in the Monte Carlo Rally, its first international competition. On 26 October SS Cars Ltd was incorporated and registered as company number 280990.

Lyons’ rationale for the SS name was obscure. He maintained it did not mean Standard Swallow even though SS1 was effectively a Swallow-bodied Standard Sixteen. Nor did it mean Standard Special, although it may have suited him to foster the confidence of the outgoing ageing Maudslay. George Brough, who made the Brough Superior SS80 and SS100 motorcycles, claimed he thought of it first.

To the stuffy Brooklands set, however, Jaguars remained a bit infra dig, derided for a feeble engine under an imposing bonnet. Industry insiders knew Standard manufactured a good deal of it and two-tone paint, a low roofline and dummy knock-off wheels deceived nobody. A quality car at the price was inconceivable, so suspicions lingered that a Jaguar could not be as good as it looked. Buyers were not to know how stringently Lyons kept control of expenditure. Even Bentley acknowledged there was no skimping on production or materials. Lyons drove bargains with suppliers, costs were held down and it was another 20 years before more than a handful of Jaguar staff got a Jaguar with the job. Lyons regarded that as a privilege earned only by the most senior executives. Cost-consciousness was a company culture.

In October 1942 John Black unexpectedly offered the production facilities on which Standard made 6-cylinder engines for sale. Lyons seized the opportunity and, although valued at £16,351 in Standard’s books, managed to buy the machinery for £6000, making sure it was safely at Jaguar before Black could change his mind, which in due course he did. In 1943 Motor Panels was reluctantly sold to Rubery Owen to cover an overdraft but Lyons had secured autonomy in engines and regretted many times over that he had not achieved the same with body building. In November 1944 Standard bought Triumph from the receiver and the Swallow sidecar business was sold to the Helliwell Motor Group, which sold it in turn, so by the time Jaguar Cars Ltd was established in March 1945, Swallow was no more than an associate of Tube Investments Ltd (TI).

Standard waterfall grille; a standard-bearer of Coventry

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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.”

Jaguar Wins SCOTY

Jaguar nearly always tops the poll in Scottish Car of the Year (SCOTY). In 1999 the S-Type took top prize. In 2001 it was the X-type. In 2003 the XJ was best luxury car and in 2004 X-type estate and S-type won again. In 2005 XJ was best diesel. In 2006 the XKR was best sporting and overall SCOTY. This year the XKR-S was again best sporting and the XF 2.2 best diesel.
Jaguar XJR-S best Scottish sporting car of the year.
This year there was a new award to mark the 50th anniversary of the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers (ASMW), which organises SCOTY. Members voted the Jaguar E-type the most iconic car in the half century since the Association was founded, making it a joint golden anniversary for both.

Sponsored by Renfrewshire Bridge of Weir Leather firm, the award was presented by CEO Jonathan Muirhead to Ken McConomy, Jaguar’s Global PR Director.
Adrian Hallmark, Global Brand Director, Jaguar Cars, said: “The 50th anniversary of the E-type is truly special - as has been the reaction throughout the year from owners and enthusiasts, many of whom weren't even born in 1961. We're honoured that the Association should present such an important award to the E-type; testament to the incredible talents of the design and engineers teams that created the car - talent, I'm happy to say, that lives on today in a new generation.”
Now the sole UK supplier of hides to the motor industry, Bridge of Weir Leather’s sponsorship was appropriate. It supplies leather for the XJ and Range Rover as well as concept show cars, including the DC100, a potential Defender replacement and C-X16sports car shown at Frankfurt.