Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust - Preserving Jaguar Legacy

We've got a special offer for Classics World viewers. Click on one of the two links in the description below to claim your free digital issue of Jaguar World or Classic Jaguar magazine. Well we're here today at the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust Jaguar collection housed here in this purpose-built building at the British Motor Museum near Boundary in Warwickshire. It's a fantastic collection charting almost 100 years of Jaguar history but as well as looking all the fantastic exhibits here today I'm also here to interview the editor of Classic Jaguar magazine Ray Ingman. My family wasn't into cars at all and a cousin of mine was the first one that got an Austin 1100. My next door neighbour in the 60s had what I now know must have been a Mark IV Jaguar which looked incredibly impressive and I assumed it was a Rolls Royce or something. Well my first ever Jaguar I think I was 19. Exchange and Mark £320 in Waltham Cross. British Racing Green Daimler Sovereign 420. XUR 577F with the sadness of people that can remember registration numbers. Where is it now? I existed with Mark IIs, S-types and what have you and got into racing and it was a few years later that I managed to buy my own E-type. I started racing back in 1982 with a 3.8 litre S-type Jaguar. Several forms of Jaguar saloon including one that I took in part exchange for the racing S-type and promptly crashed at Spa and broke my back. That got on to XJSs became attainable for racing. Very enjoyable they are too because they're sort of short wheelbase for the same reasons that Tom Wilkinshaw picked them that because of their controversial flying buttresses They're a very stiff shell. We started racing back in late 90s. Company I owned at the time Classic Spares in conjunction with Kelsey and Jaguar World Magazine created and jointly sponsored a race series for them. Unashamedly that was a bit of creating something for ourselves to do because there weren't many XJSs out there racing at the time. Jaguars in motorsport on a professional level. I was first tempted back to that that I found some photographs of the Group 44 XJR at Le Mans and I went out there that was a period of time that I'd drive to Le Mans. I think the Formula One thing it seemed very good at the time to get Jaguar into the market get their name in the marketplace but it was probably a little ill-advised. It's been nice to see the occasional F-type out there. Money no object I'd like to own a genuine lightweight E-type Jaguar. 4WPD would be my preference but any of the original 12 I wouldn't be terribly fussed. XJ12 Coupe. I thought that that was a car that really again captured Jaguar's innate elegance. Obviously it had its faults like wind noise if you drove jolly quickly in it. Very elegant, superbly powerful, lovely car. Project 8 which I've been lucky enough to work with and something with my sense of humour I would have the four-seat one with the ISOFIX in the back. I've driven them on the road, I've driven them on the track and despite looking somewhat excessive they are a real Jekyll and Hyde car that you could drive it down to Tesco's with your children in the back or you can take it to the Nürburgring. My real moment was that going to Le Mans in 88 at the wheel of my V12 Coupe. For some reason we were needing to leave late and get down there but that's an abiding memory and obviously that's coloured by the fact that when we were there we then witnessed Jaguar's winning for the first time since the D-Type. This is where it all started right, the swallow sidecars of course. As in SS. Yes, next year will be the centenary because it was 1922 that William Lyons and William Wormsley did the sidecar stuff. This is more your stuff isn't it, the Le Mans races? I actually saw the Group 44's race at Le Mans and again the Wilkinshire XJS's, I was there for that. And aren't your earliest Jaguar memories around here? This is, whilst I'm not absolutely sure, it definitely looked like a Mk4. I can remember the huge headlamps on my neighbour's car and spotted the Leaping Cat which was the clue that it might well be a Jaguar. Because obviously they did a Mk4 and a Mk5 and didn't they then have to skip Mk6 out of deference to Bentley? That was a trademark of Bentley at the time. A Series 2 XJ here, the Daimler. A Daimler version which for some reason in modern idiom has got colour coded, if you look at the vent there, for some reason that was way ahead of its time colour coded. So that's standard, that's not been over sprayed or something? No, I first thought it was a cheap re-spray. And this is more your bag, this is the V12 Coupe right? This is one of my favourite cars, the V12 Coupe. I've actually driven this very one as well and strangely again, whilst Jaguars are associated with leather, this one has the velour trim which became quite a thing at the time, so many have been retrofitted with leather. I really like the Coupe as well, I think it's gorgeous and there was a delay in it coming out, wasn't there, from when it was first shown and it was only known on sale for a couple of years. I think it was a tragedy that they didn't keep this going. So here we've got a fairly late XJS, in fact I've driven this one. They can't come any later Phil, it's the last one. The 6 litre V12. They really were getting pretty sophisticated now we've got the engine management on them. And this here is a four wheel drive one, was this like a mule for what would have been the XJ41, the F-Type I think? Yeah, it's intriguing in looking through parts books of GKN and what have you, parts for the four wheel drive were listed. Really, so it got that close to coming into production that it was actually a parts book? Suppliers were listing brake callipers and things for them. ALC, the advanced lightweight concept wasn't it, that sort of predates the X150 XK. Yeah but so close to production isn't it really, when you look at the car, it was probably at the time taken to be a styling exercise and none of us realised it was going to be the real thing. I think I know the story behind this because this obviously came out well after the actual final design had been signed off, but this was introduced at one of the motor shows, I can't remember if it was Frankfurt or Paris, but in the year that they'd closed Browns Lane, so of course there was all this negative publicity about the closure of Browns Lane and Jaguar pulling out of Coventry and this was a positive spin and we even did a photo shoot of this down in Westminster with the London Eye behind it and everything because it was something positive to look forward to, a new car, a new investment in Jaguar and it did the trick. I don't know what you think about the XJ40 Coupe given that the original one is definitely one of your favourite cars. Well I've got one thing against it, pillars. Oh of course, yes. The major thing over there is when the windows are down, it's pillarless. That's a really good point, the original F-Type as it would have been known, the XJ41, which just got a bit too heavy and bloated and expensive and complicated so that's why Ford canned it. There were so many times that the F-Type was going to be used and I think that the last time the rumour was that the car that became the DB7 was a clever way by Ford of revitalising Aston Martin but that was slated to be the F-Type. It was probably quite a good way of also moving the development costs somewhere else I imagine, some accountancy trick. We can't have a tour around a Jaguar collection without looking at the XK of course in its various guises. The theme that goes on Jaguar development from the, much like the 380 E-Type, from the purest 120, the 140 gets a little heavier but better developed in as much as that's got a steering box, that's got a steering rack so they updated it. Drum brakes and eventually on to disc brakes for the 150. So the XK150 is the one to go for, particularly if you're using it for say touring and things. In modern day usage yes but then again there's a huge marketplace for upgrading the earlier cars so that they can look original but have... Because I think the styling in the XK120 is better, I think it's a purer shape. Absolutely. By far and away. I mean this is again comparing the 380 with the Series 3. Yeah. It's kind of the same, we always come back to that. Yes indeed, yeah absolutely. What a fantastic collection of cars though, I think it's a real good trip around almost 100 years of Jaguar history. There's more Jaguar stuff over in the main museum as well of course so it's always worth a look. Well it's been good walking around with you Ray, so thanks for that. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, good stuff.