Speedier Ferret

As a reward for spending the Easter weekend decorating, we treated ourselves by using our Christmas presents at the Jaguar Heritage Driving experience up in Warwickshire just after the Bank Holiday.

As it’s a little way to travel we went up on Thursday after work and spent a night at Mallory Court again. The journey took a bit longer than expected, so less relaxation time when we got there, which was a great pity as we found we’d been upgraded to a room two levels above the one we’d booked in the main house. The Snowhill room was the size of the footprint of our house, I jest not, and could have been comfortably converted into a one bedroom flat! As well as the bed and built in wardrobe it had a sofa with coffee table, an upholstered bench, two easy chairs with their own table, a third lounge chair, an armoire containing the AV kit and 'fridge, then the dressing table and chair - I'm not sure we own that much furniture! The easy chairs were in the bay window overlooking the kitchen garden and we could have happily spent the evening there imbibing the complementary bevvies and nibbles and watching the LBJs fly round the parterre.

It was such a gorgeous evening that it really was a shame that we’d arrived too late to fit in a stroll around the gardens before dinner, but we had eating to do and although it’s lost its Michelin star since our last visit (the chef has moved) we couldn’t discern any difference in the food; it was excellent and I think the cheese selection was even better than last time. Breakfast was lovely too – I always look forward to the homemade yoghurts that we get at the hotels in the Eden Group, yes, I am that sad.

Then off on the half hour drive to Jaguar’s new testing facility at Fen End, a former RAF base recently purchased from Prodrive - although I believe that the site has historical links to Jaguar. Apparently, Norman Dewiss went round after JLR bought the site last year and said he thought the surface was the same that he drove on 50 years ago so, as one of the instructors said, we would be driving period vehicles on a period surface. Not a scary thought at all… To complete the experience last year Jaguar also bought Dr James Hull’s complete collection of five hundred and odd British cars for approximately £100 million and decided to let members of the general public with more money than sense (i.e. me) drive them. To be fair, I think the cost is pretty reasonable given the hardware you’re using and compares favourably with the track driving we’ve done at Castle Combe. The site itself is very interesting and is home to the JLR Special Operations unit (I think someone got carried away with the James Bond associations there) - we drove past camouflaged testing vehicles on the way to the track and of course, from the look of the carpark, it seemed like everyone else had a much more interesting car than us! From the number of F-Types that drew up we were beginning to wonder if JLR had started to give this out as a freebie to anyone who bought a new one.

I’d bought Jon a passenger ride in an XK150 an hour before my session so it gave us an excuse to arrive early. The reception is in a temporary building whilst they get planning permission for a permanent structure, but it’s a brilliant plate-glass structure in itself. It houses the obligatory merchandising, free refreshments and the 'Jaguar Perfect Ten' as selected by Lord March, Ian Callum and Brian Johnson (that’s the rock star not the cricket commentator) – I tried not to leave drool marks on the XK13... So, plenty to look at as you wait for your session and that’s only inside the building. Outside there are the cars being used for the track sessions and seeing that those include C-, D- and E-Types, an XKSS plus current models, as well as historic cars being used to shuttle instructors around the site, it was difficult to know what to look at first!

Everyone gets a safety briefing then it’s out on track. The XK150 was very cute in British Racing Green and Jon enjoyed his chauffeur-driven laps talking about cars. Then it was my turn. Jon had bought me the D-Type driving experience (which includes the F-Type R as well ‘cos all the driving experiences seem to have to end with an F-Type – never miss a selling opportunity!). I love D- (and C) Types, to me they are just the most beautiful cars ever made and their racing pedigree is the icing on the cake. I never thought I’d touch one or sit in one, let alone drive one, so I think I did pretty well not to run across the tarmac screaming ‘aaaaaaaahhhhhhh, it’s MINE’ when my time came. I held it all together quite well I thought.

There was none of this being driven round the track first by the expert malarkey, oh no, it was straight into the driver’s seat; which was probably a good thing as the passenger side had no door. We’d been told that getting into the D-Type was a bit of an art and, even with a door on the driver’s side, I had to stand on the seat before shimmying down into the cockpit (very glad it was a nice dry day!). Of course the seats don’t move so a cushion was found to push me forward a bit but I was still pretty much horizontal to reach the clutch pedal.

Given the calibre of the instructors I think Jaguar should make more of them on their website but, on the other hand, had I known that my instructor Rob Newall was a Monaco Historic and Le Mans Classic race winner I may not have got into the car! He was lovely and very reassuring. There was a full race harness, but no crash helmet, just headphones so that I could hear Rob’s instructions as we went round the track.

I’ve read some motoring journos on the review day referring to the D-Type as having a ‘difficult’ clutch but perhaps they had a different car to me because it was no more difficult to use than the Spridget’s – no double de clutching needed, just press the pedal all the way and don’t rush the gears, and if you can’t get into a gear just go back to the one you were in and have another go. The only difficult thing was that the gear lever is virtually horizontal, like a handbrake lever, so it was easy to forget what gear you were in (well, that’s my excuse anyway; that and the pheasant watching me from trackside just after Lorry Corner put me off). Start it up, pop it into first and pull away – yes! I didn’t stall!

It was pretty exhilarating bounding along the concrete track – proper wind in your hair and flies in the teeth stuff. After a couple of laps I was getting the hang of the gears and was, according to Rob, taking ‘Stirling Moss lines’ through the chicane at the end of the long straight - I think that meant I was flattening it off. The overtaking was fun and I did manage to get a (VERY unintentional) power over-steer coming out of the last corner, which was mainly down to enthusiasm and a touch of overconfidence (but it still felt good! :0) ). Jon was convinced that I was going faster than the other people he’d seen out on track but the needle was a bit bouncy, plus I didn’t want to take my eyes off the track, so it was difficult to tell what speed I was doing - but it was bouncing between 80 and 100 mph down the long straight at one point. I wasn’t being told to slow down (just the opposite!) and I was meeting all the braking points so I think Rob kept us well within the car and driver’s capabilities. Towards the end of the session when we were haring down the straight it was a nice touch for him to tell me to take the chance to look down the bonnet of the car, just enjoy being there and imagine what it would be like driving this at Le Mans in the 1950s. You don't get an opportunity to do this sort of thing very often so it's nice to take a moment to savour it. There was no-one else due to drive in that session so I think I may have been given a couple of extra laps, but I was possibly ready to come in when we finally came off track – despite being easy to drive it's still a heavy old car with no power steering and needed more weight on the pedals than we're used to these days - although I’d have been ready to charge back out again after a quick de-brief!

Without getting soppy about it, it's such a brilliant idea of JLRs to buy these iconic cars and let us drive them. It was a fantastic experience and well worth doing for anyone with an interest in classic cars. Every time I come off a track I think, ‘I wouldn’t mind having a go at this classic racing game’ but, luckily, I don’t have the finances! And I’m under no illusion that going round a track with 20 other lunatics is very different to going round on your own with an instructor. Still, I can dream… The D-Type’s bodywork is quite soft and it may take a while to tap out the dents my fingertips made as they tried to drag me out of the car. I’m not sure that saline is terribly good for the paintwork either…

Into the F-Type R coupe next. Very nice to look at but I was a bit nervous ‘cos I’ve very rarely driven an automatic. The first impression was that it all seemed a bit overcrowded, it felt like these expensive cars are becoming a bit like an aeroplane cockpit with the number of buttons, switches and dials - but it was nice to be able to adjust the seat to get closer to the pedals! A press of the big gold button to start (no silly start up phrases here) and it did sound good. I got used to not changing gear quite quickly but it did take a bit of nerve to put my foot down and find out just how much acceleration it had - and it really did have quite a lot! It sounded brilliant with the exhaust crackling away down the back straight. Hopefully I didn't break it when I found the bump on the exit of the last corner that I'd managed to avoid on all my laps in the D-Type, after that I had to make it hit the rev limiter before it would change gear - which made it sound even better! The new instructor seemed to think that some of my lines round the track were good and said 'Oh, have you done much circuit driving then?' - I didn't confess that I'd been listening very attentively to Rob as he'd been pointing out apexes on my previous run!

But I have to say that driving the F-Type immediately after the D-Type just made the word 'unengaging' spring to mind. It was a lovely car (the coupe looks SO much better than the soft top) and it felt like you could get it a bit wrong and throw it into a corner and still have a pretty good chance of coming out safely at the other side. The power was very impressive, especially for someone whose normal drive is a 15 year old 1.6 small family hatchback. But it just didn't compare to the older kit and just left me feeling a bit, well, 'meh'. Perhaps it was not having to change gear that left me feeling uninvolved, but I won't be putting it on my Christmas present list. I did like the way that, when you switched the engine off, the steering wheel moved out of the way to make it easier for you to get out and all the pop-up air vents decended gracefully into the dashboard!

We hung around for nearly an hour after my last session, savouring the atmosphere and the coffee in reception and wandering around the exhibits again - in fact we had to wait a while because after a morning of glorious sunshine it suddenly started hammering down and as we'd left our brollies in the car we didn't want to get soaked. We'd been very lucky with the weather and felt sorry for all of those turning up to do their laps in the wet.

Then off for a drive home that was a lot less interesting. And, yes, I have put a D-Type on my birthday present list!

These are a couple of nice articles done after the launch of the experience days at the back end of last year:

http://www.xclusively-jaguar.co.uk/xclusively-jaguar-news/view/400-jaguar-heritage-drive-day

http://www.historicracer.com/editors-diary/jaguar-heritage-driving-experience-goes-live/