The Fairford Classic Car Club

The other day I found myself following a new Jaguar XK, you know the one which looks like a stretched Jaguar XF, but with spaghetti rear lights clusters. This got me thinking about my days at Goodyear Tyre Co and one of our test drivers called John Leek (named changed to ensure no legal repercussions – but he was Welsh). Some people said that he was just ‘mad’, but in fact he was brilliant driver, albeit frightening to sit next to for the first time and also hard on his cars – as you have to be when testing tyres! Before joining Goodyears John used to be part of the Rootes team rallying Hillman Imps. Just before I joined Goodyears, his boss was not amused when he came back from a weekend in Wales with his company Hillman Hunter in terrible shape, especially when he found out that John had run it in the Rally of Wales, and finished!

In those days, early to mid ‘70’s, we spent a lot of time playing around with cars (sorry, I mean testing!) at the British Motor Industry test centre i.e. MIRA. Pounding around the high speed ‘bowl’ and the handling course, was fun but time spent brake testing and the pavé were gut and back breaking! Which brings me back to the early Jaguar XJ6s which John was testing to develop Goodyear tyres as original fitment. This involved some pretty tough endurance runs over a wide variety of conditions, including a particularly vicious hump at MIRA, which was designed to test the whole ‘travel’ of the car’s suspension. It certainly did this on the heavy XJ6, as things started to bend and John warned Jaguar that the front sub frame was not man enough for the job! Nothing wrong with it ‘old boy’ was the response, until it actually broke, and suddenly there was a redesign!

Jaguar, quite rightly, prided themself on their ride quality and this meant the tyres were a compromise between ride and performance. Whilst Dunlop was happy to live with this, Goodyear was not, saying it was too dangerous. Jaguar would not budge, so John took a Dunlop shod XJ6 up and down the duel carriageway (and roundabouts) in front of Jaguar’s Brown Lane factory, and promptly managed to wreck all four tyres! I think Jaguar was by now suspicious of John’s driving, as I do not think Goodyear won this battle.

Goodyear used to run a fleet of test cars but also used to hire particular models from the national hire-car companies (I better not say which ones!). On one occasion John hired an XJ6 in the UK to take to the Goodyear test centre in Luxembourg. On the way to Dover he tried to pass a line of cars, but forgetting he was in an automatic, changed down and put it into reverse (the Jag gear change at the time was not the best), spun and disappeared down a bank, and into a field. The car was a wreck and his girlfriend (a beautiful LuxAir stewardess named Yola – but I digress!) was not amused! However, John being John, got to Dover and hired another XJ6, but did not tell Goodyear until later – too late for the phone calls from the hire company asking about their wrecked Jaguar.

Hear endeth my Christmas tale, so best wishes for the ‘Festive Season’ from Jill and myself and here’s to the FCCC’s 25th Anniversary year in 2012.

Malcolm Cutler – December 2011