PHOTOGRAPHS: ALAMY
Some of the greatest cars in
history have been unveiled
on UK shores. Alistair
Weaver revisits the best
panning a full 60 years, the
British Motor Show isn’t so
much an event as an institution.
Sure, there are other motor
shows, but none have a heritage that boasts
the likes of Jaguar, Rover, TVR and, lest we
forget, the Austin Montego Estate. Running
from 23 July to 3 August at London’s ExCel
Centre, this year’s debutants will include the
long-awaited replacement for the Lotus
Esprit (at time of going to press it still hasn’t
named it, instead calling it ‘Project Eagle’),
the Vauxhall Insignia and a new fast Ford,
the Focus RS. Join us as we remember
the very best of the last six decades…
S
JAGUAR XK120 (1948)
The XK120 was Jaguar’s first post-war
sports car. Designed to simply showcase
its new 3.4-litre straight-six engine, the
response was so positive that Sir William
Lyons decided to build it. The XK120 moniker
referred to the car’s top speed (120mph)
and at the time of its launch it could claim
to be the world’s fastest production car.
The earliest examples were handbuilt
with aluminium bodies on an ash frame.
Originally launched as a roadster, Jaguar
introduced coupé and cabriolet models in
1951 and 1953. By the time it was replaced
by the XK140 in 1954, Jaguar had built
12,000. It cost £1,263, but a decent example
today will set you back at least £50K.
JENSEN FF (1966)
Audi may claim to have created the first
mass-produced four-wheel drive car, but it’s
not strictly true. The first 4x4 road car was
the Jensen FF, introduced at the Earls Court
show in 1966. ‘FF’ stands for Ferguson
Formula, and was a reference to the 4x4
hardware, which was shared with the
24 / WWW.SHORTLIST.COM
The Stig’s
butler arrived
Delia parked up for the
Norwich match
The biggest
British Motor
Show debuts
Ferguson tractors. It even had an
experimental anti-lock braking system.
In the best traditions of British innovation
though, the FF was a commercial disaster.
All that trick hardware made it significantly
more expensive than its sister car, the
rear-wheel-drive Interceptor and rivals
such as the Jaguar E-type. Plus, Audi
couldn’t make it left-hand drive, rendering
it useless for the European or US markets.
Only 320 were ever produced.
AUSTIN MONTEGO
ESTATE (1984)
In 1984, with the miners’ strike in full swing,
Austin Rover launched the new Montego
Estate. As a rival to the Vauxhall Cavalier
and the Ford Sierra, this car was at the
cutting edge of technology; the estate
version, designed by Roy Axe, had a
self-levelling rear suspension and a pair
of rear-facing child seats, just in case
you fancied turning your children into
a crumple zone. Absurd though it sounds,
the humble Montego even won a Design
Council Award for its efforts.
Early models also featured uured
a ‘talking
dashboard’ with a trip computer, mmputer,
but both
proved comically unreliable. ble.
By the end of
the Eighties the Austin name mme
had died but
the Montego lived on until l 1995, by which
time 436,000 has been sold oold
in the UK.
JAGUAR XJ220 (1988) 11988)
This was the UK’s answer to the legendary
Porsche 959 and Ferrari F40. FF40.
Originally
developed as a project by the
‘Saturday Club’ (engineers rs
working out of hours), the e
project caught the eye of
the Jaguar board and it
appeared in concept form m
“Dad, the
skip’s here”
at the 1988 Show with a target top speed of
220mph. The concept featured a 500bhp
V12 and four-wheel drive, and yuppie
speculators queued up to put down
a £50K deposit for the £361K car.
But by the time the production car
arrived in 1991, the economic boom was over
and the car had changed dramatically. The
V12 had been replaced by a 549bhp, 3.5-litre
twin-turbo V6, , the 4x4 hardware was g ggone,
,
as were the scissor doors, but the price had
managed to rise to £403K. Some customers
were so angry that they sued Jaguar, and
many ended up buying themselves out
of their delivery contracts. Just 281 cars
were built in the end, and by 1997, the
last few were on sale for just £150K.
DeVito and Corbett
enjoyed Sunday drives
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