My Mother, Mike Hawthorn

In addition to the obvious gender difference, my mum and Mr. Hawthorn didn’t have much in common except for the following: 1) They were both blonde, 2) they were both English (alright, alright, my mum was of English ancestry only, but on both sides of her family, okay?), and 3) most importantly, they both drove Jaguar saloons. Poor Mike “bought the farm” as they say in his MKI. My mother’s experience was far more positive, except she never drove a Jag to victory at Le Mans like Hawthorn did. She would have preferred it that way.

It was fall of 1968, I was 15 or 16 and in my sophomore year of high school. To give you an idea of how strong my Anglomania was, they had just taken Diana “Mrs. Peel” Rigg off “The Avengers” and I still watched it! It gets worse. There were to my mind only British rock bands; American ones were, at best, looked at with suspicion. At school I spelled color “colour’’ and honor “honour’’ and so on with the expected responses from my teachers. And if all this and much more wasn’t enough, there were the cars.

I saw my first English car, a Riley Pathfinder at the tender age of four. About the same time, I remember going for a ride in my Uncle Sid’s MG TD. To say I was hooked was to say W.C. Fields had a bit of a drinking problem. Whilst other classmates lusted after Corvettes, Roadrunners and Camaros, I was getting hot over Rover 2000s, MGBs, Austin-Healeys—and of course, Jaguars, any Jaguar, not just the legendary E-Type.

In those days around Seattle, there were far more small and esoteric used car lots that stocked whatever the owners of the lot fancied, not what J.D. Powers (who is that?) said they should fancy. One such place was Vermont Motors on Roosevelt Way. Their stock included everything from Citroen DS to MG Ts and, or course, Jaguars of all spots and stripes. On weekends, an equally car-mad friend and myself would bicycle (we weren’t quite driving age yet or in possession of anything resembling cash) all they way from Shoreline to check out the inventory. The sales hungry staff liked seeing us. Really! They lived on the hope that one of these crazy and broke teens would lure their less than broke and license-possessing parents in to buy one of their jewels.

Poised on the lot were two Jags, a matched pair, in fact. They were both 3.8 MkIIs, both automatics and both in Olde English white with red leather and disc wheels. One, which was very nice, went for $800. The other, which was perfect in every way, $1,400. Remember, this was 1968 and some Jaguars, no matter how nice, were not flavors of the month, and as such commanded which for even the late 1960s were reasonable prices. To make matters more interesting, my parents had as of late been sniffing around the idea of buying either a brand-new or really sound second-hand car to replace our nice but aging 57 Chevy. Never mind that they were thinking more along the lines of another Chevy, I was convinced “we” should buy British and I knew just the car they should get! Not only that, the Jag was an automatic, so mum could drive (big point) and a four door, not some crazy sports car, so we could all ride in it! And only $1,400! Perfect, right? Somehow one weekend that Autumn I managed to connive my folks into at least looking at this British thoroughbred, with the same car-crazy friend in tow for moral support. My mum just liked to get out of the house and do something different, and, looking at a 63 Jaguar Mkll was certainly different. The fact that she’d never actually seen one didn’t hurt either. My father wasn’t so easy to convince. A true-blue Boeing man and probably the finest mechanic and craftsman I’ll ever know, he wasn’t going to be taken in by some rinky-dink car salesman. The fact that he only thought there were two nationalities, the Americans and the Germans, who could build a motorcar to his aircraft quality standards meant my dad was going to be a little harder cheese on the matter of Jaguar ownership. He thought it very strange that I admired the British so. Funny guy, my old dad.

It didn’t go well that Saturday afternoon. For one thing, the friendly salesman in question was just a little bit drunk. A slow sales day for him I guess, but I was mortified. He nonetheless was more than happy to show us this wonderful Jaguar.

He promptly flooded the engine.

The more he tried, the worse it got, and of course, the battery ran down. The salesman, stumbling and reeling around the car was utterly clueless on how to make her fire. My father politely thanked the inebriated chap and we were off. Later, as my friend and I consumed a cheeseburger at a nearby Herfy’s (remember them?) I realized that I had just confirmed by father’s suspicions, that being that British cars were always failure-prone and sold (and probably owned) by drunks! My mum, on the other hand, was very quiet on the subject. Like I said, she liked to get out of the house and try something different. Of course, in addition to my rampant Anglomania, there was school and its attendant complications. The most persistent of these complications, for me anyway, were the dreaded report cards.

My first year at Shoreline High School wasn’t going very smoothly, so that Autumn when I finally managed to get a quarterly report that was better than mediocre, my parents, and particularly my mum, were well pleased, to say the least. Good report cards were, needless to say, good bargaining chips as well, mostly for rises in one’s weekly allowance. This one was as well, but it would have an interesting twist. At this time, my dad was doing a lot of overtime and second shift work at Boeing in Everett (the new 747!) so evenings I was sort of “man of the house” and was behooved upon to keep my mum company and generally cheer her up until dad got home about midnight. My father was indeed doing second shift the Friday I came home with my higher than norm marks. And indeed I was given a rise in allowance, but in addition I was offered a ride. “Why don’t we go over to that lot on Roosevelt and try out that car you liked, rather than sit around here all evening?” asked my mum. Needless to say I was quite surprised. “You mean the white Jag?” I asked. “You said it had an automatic, just like the Chevy, right?” she asked rather nervously. I had to agree with that, “Yes, just put it in drive and away you go; but what if they’ve sold it?” She smiled and said “Your father and I had to go over that way earlier today before he went to work and she’s still there.” That was enough for me and off we went into the clean autumn night.

We went, or course, in the famous 57 Chevy Bel-Air, the only brand-new car my parents would even own, by the way. My dad drove a very sad looking 58 Volkswagen to work “for economy reasons.” Like I said, he could be a funny guy. The Bel-Air was not just the only car my mum had ever driven, but the only one she felt at ease in, making this sudden urge to drive one of Coventry’s finest stranger still. But she was an excellent driver (with automatic Chevys, anyway) and besides, I thought, a British purebred like the Mkll must be way easier to drive than that truck of a Chevrolet, right?

As luck would have it, we got the same salesman again (I think now he was probably the owner) but in considerably better shape. He was very sorry about the car’s non-performance (and perhaps his) during our last visit and was very pleased, no doubt, to see that the “Lady of the House” and her crazy son had come back. “I want to take that Jaguar out and my son is going with me; you said it was an automatic so it’s all right?!?” my mum announced and asked, all in one breath. Of course we could take it out. “Take it out for as long as you want, take her for a real spin. She’s one of the best cars here and I want you to see it for yourselves.” the salesman beamed. “I’ll just wait for you here at the office.” Ah freedom, he was going to stay behind.

My mum and I slowly climbed in, more like we were getting into a Canberra bomber than a four-door saloon. With an automatic. My mother was not a giant of a woman so seeing her small frame poised in front of that imposing steering wheel and walnut dash looked somehow comical. But she was keen as mustard. “Why won’t it start when I turn the key?” she asked, trying to be calm. “You have to push the starter button, mum,” sounding like I knew what I was talking about. She got a huge kick out of that. “I’ve never seen anything like that, that’s neat!” She pushed it and the 3.8 burst into life. “Just listen to that,” she gasped, “what a great sound!” After showing her where the fly-off hand brake was, she put the famous automatic into “D” and we were off for my first ride in a Jaguar—and my mum’s first and last drive in one as well.

You always hope experiences will somehow live up to your expectations and my first outing in a Jag was definitely one of them. It wasn’t that the car was insanely fast or neck-snapping in its acceleration, all of that as Rolls-Royce would say was “adequate,” but very smooth. What was impressive was just the whole mood of the car. It was, to my teenage mind, what Britishness was all about; not fine leather and wood, but serious breeding, like actual bloodstock which made the Mkll seem more like a living thing than a machine.

After a block or two, I swore one day I’d own one. My mother was enjoying herself hugely. “It really goes very nicely” she cooed as we went up 45th Street, “but let’s take it on the freeway and see what she’ll really do, do you think the salesman will mind?” she asked as we blasted down the northbound ramp. My mother seemed to be in another world in the glow of the Smith’s instruments as we headed for the Green Lake exit. “I really wished your father liked this car, it just drives so smooth,” she said wistfully.

Before I knew it, we were back at Vermont Motors. Mum said she loved it but “will have to talk it over with my husband,” as was typical then. And that was it. “Why don’t we get a burger somewhere and talk about the Jaguar?” she said. And that’s just what we did.

Our ride was the topic of conversation around the Groves household that weekend, but my father was unmoved, there was to be no British steel in our garage. Yet he was pleased (and surprised not doubt) that my mum had gone out to flog the car, even if it was to please me. Oh, and he was pleased about my report card too.

The author and his current British mistress, a 1971 MGB GT.

The die was now truly cast with me. For in the next few years, along with a driver’s license, I would acquire a Hillman Minx (my first car!), two MGs, an Austin 1300, a Rover 2000 and in fact never to this day have I owned an American, Japanese or car from mainland Europe—only British. Much, needless to say, to my father’s horror! Both my parents are gone now. I’m on my 16th British car, a 77 MGB GT. My mum never really took to the other English machines I owned, but always got a faraway look in her eyes when Jaguars came up in conversation. “Now those are real cars. They’re so smooth,” she’d say. Did she take me out that night to please me? Maybe. But I never saw my mum drive a car like that again. Maybe the link to Mike Hawthorn and that kind of driving to my mum isn’t quite so silly as it seems. Needless to say, my old mum never had a clue as to Hawthorn, Moss, Brooks or any of the others who were in racing. But when my parents died some years ago they left my sister and I a fair bit of money. My sister and her husband wisely invested some of the cash into my parents’ house so it could be sold, and invested the rest into their own. Dad would have definitely approved. Me? The first thing I did was buy the cleanest XJ-6 I could find. It wasn’t a Mkll, or course. But I think mum would still have approved. It was so smooth.

By Jeff Groves