editorial@classiccarweekly.co.uk
Jaguar’s cast-iron innovator
LETTERS OF THE WEEK
Richard Heseltine did a good job with his article on the Jaguar XK120 (CCW, 3 April) – but I have just one criticism. It seems so unjust for the manufacturers who really did pioneer all-aluminium engines – namely those with both block and cylinder head in that material – to have the XK engine credited with having introduced that feature given that Jaguar XK blocks were in fact made in good old cast iron.
AC actually carries the credit for introducing an all-aluminium engine in a production car from 1919, with its single overhead-cam, six-cylinder unit, which carried on to 1963 and there were almost certainly others that preceded the Jaguar unit.
You’re right that aluminium engine blocks and cylinder heads certainly pre-date the XK120… Karl Benz experimented with aluminium engine blocks, as did the Wright brothers in their first powered flight back in 1903 – Ed.
Greasers and Anglias
I'm afraid to say that the writer of your The Way We Were feature on the M61 in early Seventies Lancashire (CCW, 3 April) is incorrect to assume that drivers would have referred to the driver of the modified Anglia 105E as 'a greaser’.
Speaking as, it seems, the unofficial spokesman for greasers, there's no way that they would have been driving an An
