Dewis leads homage to Jaguar disc brakes

Former Jaguar chief test driver, Norman Dewis OBE, led a celebration for what he considers to be one of the greatest ever motoring innovations – the disc brake.

Norman helped to develop the disc brake with Jaguar, Mintex and Dunlop. This form of braking system, which is now standard fitment on most modern cars, was first debuted at the 1952 Mille Miglia on a Jaguar C-type.

Norman says: ‘It’s definitely one of the biggest breakthroughs in motoring innovations. It’s allowed cars to both go quicker, and be safer. We decided to debut it at the Mille Miglia as it’s such a tough race, especially on the brakes. It’s fast, but very tight in the towns and mountains.

‘When Sir Stirling and I debuted the system, people had never seen it on a car before. Scrutineers didn’t even know what it was. The allround discs were such an improvement, it was night and day. We were able to pick through the pack not by the power or the handling of our C-type, but by sheer braking. We could brake so much later than competitors, we could just keep accelerating while they were braking.’ 65 years after Jaguar debuted disc brakes on its C-type racer, Mintex, which worked with Jaguar to develop the disc brake, celebrated by debuting History In The Braking, a feature-length documentary starring Norman, and Sir Stirling Moss, at the Revival. mintex.com