Description
SIGNED BY NORMAN DEWIS
This is a story both of personal achievement and of a heroic period in Jaguar’s history. In a career spanning 33 years at Jaguar, Norman Dewis tested and developed a remarkable series of cars including:■ C-type ■ D-type ■ XK 140/150 ■ 2.4/3.4 and Mk 2 saloons ■ Mk VII/Mk VIIM ■ E-type ■ XJ13 ■ XJ/XJ-S ■ XJ40
Plus, he rode with Stirling Moss in a C-type in the 1952 Mille Miglia, drove a 190mph works D-type in the highly dramatic 1955 Le Mans, raced in the Goodwood 9 Hours, and set an amazing 173mph production car record at Jabbeke in Belgium with an XK 120. Completing over a million test miles at 100mph-plus average, Norman also played a crucial role developing the revolutionary Dunlop disc brake, and survived high-speed crashes and rollovers in the days before seat-belts – and without ever breaking a single bone.
This book is automatically also a development history of Jaguar, with a wealth of new technical details of how key models were evolved.Filled with personal insights and fascinating technical detail, this book tells the unique story of a great Jaguar character and the equally great cars he worked with.
Norman did not, of course, work in isolation and his recollections bring to life the unique team which made Jaguar great – company founder Sir William Lyons, engineering director Bill Heynes, development engineer Bob Knight, aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer, and service department and race team manager Lofty England. These and many more become real people as Norman tells of his every-day involvement with them.
Norman’s proudest moment in the last decade was receiving the MBE in 2015, a fitting recognition of his achievements for Jaguar and the British motor industry – for both of which he remains a great ambassador
If anyone was at the heart of Jaguar during perhaps its most remarkable decades of achievement, it was Norman Dewis. Read this book and you will absorb the authentic flavour of Jaguar in Coventry and fully appreciate the achievements of a remarkable man.
