Spare a thought for Billy Walmsley. Billy and Willy Lyons set up the Swallow Sidecar Company 93 years ago. But Bill didn’t have the same ambition as his partner and left the company just before it became Jaguar, so he could have more time building his model trains. Willy changed the name not because Billy left but because, after World War II, the SS brand didn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Your guess on who was more successful: Willy with Jaguar or Billy with Airlite trailers and model trains?
I’m telling you this because last weekend I decided to help Jag promote itself. As you know, ever since Ratan Tata bought the company in 2008 the firm has struggled with its heritage. In fact last year it spent around $200 million buying 543 old Jags, Land Rovers and Swallows from the Woolworths of dentists, Jimmy Hull, to make a heritage statement. And to give work to a lot of auto electricians and oil-spill-clean-up engineers.
There’s nothing wrong with having 543 old English cars around the office except to think, “What do you do with them?” So someone at Mr Tata’s company said: “Why don’t we let punters like John Connolly pay us a couple of hundred to drive them around the old Prodrive test track near Coventry?”
This was good news for me but really bad news for you. I drove a D-type (pictured), an XK150, a racing Mark II and the 2014 XK 5.0 Supercharged V8 R-S GT (only 100 made). Naturally I took a couple of Jaguar instructors in the left hand seat to show them how to do it. Rob Newall is a classic Jag champion, including taking a podium at Le Mans in a C-type. Stu Clarke is a touring car champion. Both said they were very grateful for all I showed them but don’t bother coming back.
Basically, except for the D-type the old cats were super hard work. The XK150 has a steering wheel that wouldn’t be out of place on the Titanic and is about as easy to turn. Real men, women and others raced these cars. The D-type is heaven despite the racing clutch and a tight gearbox. It was lighter to steer than the 60 years younger XK R-S.
The bad news for you is it looks like the Jaguar track experience ends this month. I’m not sure, because the PR people were too busy to ring me back.
Harder work was our own Garth Walden winning the world time attack challenge at Eastern Creek this month. Apart from being a celebrity racer, celebrity team manager and official support to The Weekend Australian motoring entry in the 24 Hours of LeMons, Garth knows his way around the world’s weirdest form of racing. Putting it simply, in time attack you spend a year putting about a million kilowatts in a small sedan, adding a heap of carbon-fibre wings, tails and fronts, and racing it once around the circuit.
I think I prefer model trains.
Time attacking for Australia, Garth set a new lap record in the Tilton Interiors Evo, leaving New Zealand’s V8 champ, Shane Van Gisbergen, as first loser with Under Suzuki coming in third in, no you guessed wrong, a Nissan. Interestingly (well, interestingly compared to building model train parts), Shane used to own a Suzuki.
Shane may have better luck if he enters next month’s Mystery Box Rally. Brought to us by the Shit Box Rally people, 75 teams from all over this wide brown land will leave Sydney for somewhere.
