Growing up at Jaguar By Graham Robson It was a coincidence, really. I was enormously lucky, fell on my feet in one of the most famous companies in the world, and have never forgotten the great times I had while I was there. It all started at Oxford, where I was reading Engineering, and was…
Midget GTs? That’s right, Midget GTs! The factory in Abingdon actually built Midget GTs. Well, at least three of them, and they had to be built in secret, so the mother company (BMC) would not find out. But this story starts out back in 1955 with a man named Dick Jacobs. Dick Jacobs was a successful…
I have long admired Joseph Lucas and when you get done with this article maybe you will too. A hard working family man, Lucas was never an English born Diogenes who wandered the streets of Birmingham trying to plot a scheme to keep you in the dark. The fact of the matter is that old…
Most automotive enthusiasts appreciate the innate differences between sports cars from America, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom even if they are unable to articulate what makes them unique. Even the casual car guy can tell you that American muscle cars have large displacement engines; Italian engines make their power with lots of…
No less a personage than Top Gear presenter James May considers the Triumph Mayflower the ugliest car of all time. The first monocoque Triumph was designed by Leslie Moore who was the Design Chief at Mulliners (responsible for much of the coachwork for Rolls-Royce and Bentley) and was given an interpretation of Triumph’s pre-war razor edge…
A Michelotti MG? More than one. Really? Most of us never knew about the connection between the prolific Italian designer and MG from Abingdon. In a strange twist, Giovanni Michelotti – who would become famously associated with Triumph for his landmark work on the Herald, Vitesse, TR4, Spitfire, GT6, Dolomite, 2000 and Stag – found…
Like Triumph, its Coventry neighbor, Singer Motors Limited started in business in 1874 as a bicycle manufacturer before turning to cars and commercial vehicles at the turn of the century. An established innovator in the industry, Singer brought to market the first practical small car that was an equal to contemporary larger cars (rather than…
The MG TD Motto was the result an effort by John Inskip and David Ash to create a car that could compete against the increasingly successful Porsche 550 Spyder and OSCA MT4 in the SCCA’s F-modified racing class. Inskip was the son of a renowned evangelical preacher who eschewed the church in favor of a…
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.” – John Greenleaf Whittier The Swinging Sixties represented the high-water mark for the British automotive industry. The Jaguar E-Type – introduced in 1961 – was widely considered one of the best sports cars in the world and more affordable…
The Austin A40 Sports evolved from a series of joint venture projects between Austin and Jensen Motors. Inspired by the Jensen Interceptor, Austin’s Chairman Leonard Lord wanted to sell a Jensen bodied touring car using A40 mechanicals that would serve as a “halo” car for the entire A40 model range. The car was designed by…
