Description
Author: Doug Nye, Hardbound, 208 Pages, ISBN: 9781899870776
This expanded edition published in 2005
- Author Doug Nye's Foreword:
One of the formative influences which shaped my enthusiasm for motor racing in almost all its forms was early contact as a schoolboy with a locally kept and maintained Lister-Jaguar. In period I thought it was a fabulously exotic beast. Subsequent experience and growing knowledge persuaded me that this was not — perhaps — the case, and a sense of proper perspective later placed such competition specials based upon off-the-shelf production Jaguar bits into a more realistic category within my scheme of things.
Even so I have never lost my soft spot for these cars and for those who created, built, raced and subsequently preserved them for later generations to enjoy. In 1978-79, John Blunsden of Motor Racing Publications, who some 15 years previously had given me my very first job on Motor Racing magazine, asked me to produce the original edition of this book on the HWM-, Cooper-, Tojeiro- and Lister-Jaguars.
I thought that such a project would merely involve a simple and speedy resume of the Jaguar-powered sports cars' story, but I soon discovered that the slightest scratch on the surface exposed ever deeper and more complicated questions to be asked. For giving so much of their time to providing the answers to these questions I became especially grateful to a fantastically broad spectrum of past owners, mechanics, photographers and writers — a large proportion of whom are now sadly (25 years after the original edition) no longer with us. These fantastically cooperative and enthusiastic friends, supporters and acquaintances included Messrs George Abecassis, John Cooper, John Tojeiro and, particularly, Brian Lister (into May 2005 the last survivor of the prime constructors). 'Dick' Barton and Don Moore of the original Lister equipe also provided absolutely invaluable assistance and encouragement, as did Stan Sproat of Ecurie Ecosse and Frank Nagel of HW Motors Ltd.
Special thanks also went to John Harper, John Coundley, Dr Philippe Renault, John Bekaert, Frank le Gallais, Dick Shattock, Bruce Halford, John B. Blanden, Barry Simpson and John Pearson for giving so freely of their time and knowledge.
I also emerged extremely grateful for the advice and information supplied by past and present car constructors, owners, drivers and associates including Tony Gaze, Mrs Barbara Heath, Kirk Rylands, Bobby Bell, Stephen Langton, Patrick Head, Jonathan Sieff, Peter Blond, John Bateson, Gil Baird, Austen Nurse, 'Wilkie Wilkinson, Gil Dickson, Mo Gomm, Len Pritchard, Tim Abbott, Ken Rogers, Geoffrey Marsh, John Ogier, Peter Mould, Peter and Terry Moore, Terry Grainger, Ray Fielding, Peter Riley, Malcolm Boston, Jim Diggory, Michael Wright, Peter Gammon, John Horridge, Joel E. Finn, Peter Bolton, Tom Bleasdale (whose 'Lister-MG' turned out to have been a Lester-MG), Nick Jerromes, David Harvey, Peter Sargent, Jeremy Broad, John Webb, Frank Webb, Norman Hillwood, Len Hayden, John Michelsen, Chris Drake, Martyn Chapman, David Ham and, last but by no means least, Michael Bowler, founding Editor of Thoroughbred ei Classic Cars magazine and himself driver and European Historic Champion in a Lister-Jaguar of his own.
On the pure research and journalistic side of this project sincere thanks were (and are) due for the supply of photographs and information to Geoffrey Goddard, Denis Jenkinson, Graham Gauld, Michael Turner, Duncan Rabagliati, Tony Hogg of the American Road & Track magazine, Bob Tronolone, Graham Fleming, Dudley Gahagan, Peter Brockes and Nick Georgano of the National Motor Museum Libraries at Beaulieu, Hants, Quentin Spurring, contemporary Editor of Autosport magazine and photographer Jeff Bloxham, to Jonathan Wood of Thoroughbred & Classic Cars, and to Andrew Whyte — formerly of Jaguar Cars. Thanks were also due to publisher Simon Taylor of Autosport for allowing his magazine's contemporary road tests of these classic sports cars to be reproduced in these pages.
Work on this second, updated edition has occupied many months more than we thought it would. Why is this always the case? Probably because we have taken no easy options here in attempting to provide a comprehensive — if enforcedly still far from conclusive — Register of all relevant cars built to the designs discussed in these pages. This work has been assisted immeasurably by cooperation from the following: John and Gary Pearson, John Harper, Chris Keith-Lucas of CKL Developments, Chris Renwick, Julian Bronson, Mike Anthony, John Harden, Syd Silverman, Michael Lynch, David Seibert, Art Huttinger, Bob Colombosian, Mike Argetsinger, Joel Finn (yet again), Anthony Hutton, Mike McDowell, Peter Kaus, Don Thallon, Graham Gauld, Sir Anthony Bamford, Marcel Gosset, Roland Urban, Bill Clark and Alan Stanton of Auto Restorations, Christchurch, New Zealand, Jim Hall of Chaparral Cars (no less), Dick and Juriaan van Amsterdam, Bobbie Bell, Phil Bennett, Bob Jones, Murray Smith, Rick Weiland, Paul Parker (son of sometime ENB Lister owner Maurice), John Mozart, David Clark, David Gasken, John McCaw, Dominic Dobson (late of the McCaw Cavallino Holdings Collection), Alan Ensoll, Rupert Beckwith-Smith, 'Drew Middleton, Geoff Gartside, Simon Ham, Dana Freeman, the lifelong owner of 'BI-IL 115' who prefers to remain anonymous, Diederich von Boetticher, my friends and colleagues at Bonhams & Brooks auctioneers, Howard Turner, Jimmy Blumer, Gerry Georgi, Eno de Pasquale, Jim Haim, Staffan Svenby, Don and Justin Law, Allan Lloyd and, last but absolutely not least, to the uniquely well-qualified contributors to <Atlasfl .com>'s remarkable 'Nostalgia Forum', many of whom gave extraordinary leads and assistance in unraveling as much as we were able of the tangled later-lives ownership and identity web which enmeshes so many of these evocative sports-racing cars' individual histories.
