RESTORATION
This 1964 E-Type Series 1 has only just been returned to the road following a crash by the first owner when it was just three months old.We explore its unique past and take it for a drive
CAN YOU imagine how you’d feel if you crashed a three-month-old car? You’d be no doubt devastated. Now imagine if that car was an Opalescent Maroon E-Type 4.2 open-two-seater. I’m not sure how anyone would be able to get up in the morning after that. This is the situation that faced millionaire playboy, Tom Casson, in 1965when he damaged his brand-new Jaguar at a circuit.
Yet whilemost of uswould have done anything to put our pride and joy back on the road, Casson didn’t bother.Despite being sold a fewmonths later, the car stillwasn’t fully repaired and has only just been returned to the road nearly 60 years after the initial crash.
Casson was born in 1918, the son thewealthymill owner in Elland, West Yorkshire.When his father,George, passed away in 1948 Tom inherited his fortune plus BarkislandHall, a beautiful 17th century manor house located a fewmileswest ofHuddersfieldwhich his family had lived in since the 1920s.
Due to his considerable wealth, Tom Casson was something of a northern playboy with a long-held reputation for reckless driving. In July 1940 when he was just 21 and a lieutenant in the army, Casson was convicted for manslaughter due to knocking down and killing a 17-year-old mill-girl who was cycling home through Boothtown, a suburb of Halifax. He was banned from driving for a decade and served ten months in prison. Casson said he’d been dozing at the time following a party to celebrate the Grand National horse race and didn’t realise he’d hit someone and so therefore didn’t stop.
This wasn’t his first offence since Casson had already been in court no less than seven times for dangerous driving. The judge in the Boothtown case summed up by saying, “Your record as a motorist is shocking. You are one of those who bring scandal on the name of motorists, breaking every rule. I would add that you are not fit to drive a car in your present state of mind, perhaps in ten years’ time you may be different.”
In late 1964 and through his local Jaguar distributor in Leeds he ordered a brand new E-Type 4.2 open-two-seater in Opalescent Maroon with a grey interior. Chassis 1E1064 was built on 15 December and despatched on New Year’s Day when it was registered TC22.
Three months after taking delivery Casson attended a track day at Snetterton circuit in
Norfolk, losing control on the first corner of his first lap, sideswiping a barrier and damaging along the nearside bodywork. Despite the E-Type having a mere 2800 miles on the clock and the wounds mainly cosmetic, Casson never had it repaired. When he finally sold the car a few months later when it was re
