Vertical Tailfin & a Couple of Cams

Standing before the ’56 LeMans winner, all of Lyon’s metal efforts, from the side cars to stylishly diminutive Austin 7s to the Triumph powered sedans and immortal sportsman’s SS100 flashed in quick paced mental slide show, holding frame and focus on the metallic copper XK120 of the 1948 Earl’s Court Motor Show. A fantasy super sportsman’s roadster, styled in the pre-war French aerodynamique’ tradition, chopped and channeled together from bits of the sedan the firm had run too short of funds to complete for the Earl’s Court show.

Britain had come out of the war a victor. The laurels rested uneasily on an exhausted economy. In need of hard currency, all manufacturing resources were closely regulated for the underlying purpose of export sales. The copper XK on the Jaguar stand was pure promotion in the eyes of Lyons and Heynes, as the possibility of obtaining the steel for manufacture of such mechanical frivolity was less than possible. That is until the war weary public lined the stand with enthusiasm and requests for purchase of a car Jaguar personnel had not even thought to bring order books for. Hell it was just a bit of metal wrapped sedan bits shaped to capture in metallic highlight the imagination of the public. After all it was the engine beneath the hood and the unseen car beneath car cover behind the roadster on the stand they were trying to sell.
But it was in the seat of the new roadster, driving beyond the privations of a post war Britain, girl next to them, hair blowing through dreams of the high-speed freedom they fought for that caught the public’s imagination. And had them reaching for their checkbooks.