Visits a workshop near Banbury where venerable Jensens are given a new lease of life
Ed Wiseman
The Jensen Interceptor is a divisive car. You either love it, or you’ve never heard of it. Because unlike most British classics, nobody can look at an Interceptor and think “nah, that’s not for me”. As soon as you encounter this or indeed any Jensen for the first time, there will always be a small part of your psyche that wants to drive one.
I don’t remember exactly when this particular switch went off in my head, but it was when I was a carobsessed child in the Nineties. I had no understanding of what a “playboy” could be, nor of what the books meant by “gentleman’s express”; In fact I had no idea what the Sixties or Seventies were about, culturally, and was largely disinterested in the Interceptor’s semiotics. My favourite cars were the ones with the nicest shapes, and the Jensen Interceptor – with its fishbowl rear windscreen and brutish front end – was easily one of the best.
It’s taken two decades and some questionable career choices to actually get behind the wheel of one, but here I am. In the low-slung and slightly awkward driver’s seat of a real-life Jensen Interceptor, in red, at the bottom of the A423. It howls, it roars, it handles magnificently; unlike many iconic cars I’ve driven in adulthood, it’s every bit as good as I thought it would be when I was eight.
There’s probably a reason for that. Jensen Interceptors were notoriously unreliable, and – unbeknown to my wide-eyed wonder all those years ago – a bit naff to drive at times. But out here, in a workshop near Banbury, an outfit called Cropredy Bridge Cars is turning the naive childhood fantasy of Jensen ownership into reliable, comfortable, mechanically sound reality.
CEO Matthew GuilliardWatts, HR and operations director Leah GuilliardWatts and technical manager Mark Walbyoff head up this remarkable organisation. On the one hand, it’s undeniably a couple of sheds in Oxfordshire. On the other, it’s a highly efficient, ISO 9001-compliant enterprise with quality and transparency at its core. As much as possible is done inhouse, with electrical specialists and even an ex-Jensen employee on the team. In a sense it has more in common with a 21st-century automotive OEM than with the rural workshop it looks like from the outside.
“Our main mission is to get as many ‘best-example’ Jensens out there as possible,” says Matthew GuilliardWatts. “What that means is better than new, because of the slight modern technology we can put in it, without changing the look of the car at all. It’s about absolute originality.”
Some of the cars in this building are pristine, gleaming examples of the brand, as good as – or in some cases, far better than – when they were new. Others are mere silhouettes, rusty shadows of their former selves, barely recognisable as Jensens. I’m taken aback not only by Cropredy’s apparent willingness to awaken the dead, but also by the fact that these beautiful cars have been allowed to deteriorate to such extents.
One of the problems with Jensens is that they aren’t particularly valuable. Or at least, they aren’t valuable yet – Guilliard-Watts thinks that topquality Vignale cars will one day be worth half a million – and as such have not been looked after with the respect and diligence they now merit.
At one end of the workshop is a slightly shabby example, with bits hanging off and the kind of interior you’d expect to find in an abandoned beach hut. I wouldn’t describe it as a no-hoper, but it can’t be far off. Guilliard-Watts, however, explains its presence here with reverence.
“That’s a special FF. That’s number 8,” he says. “It’s the one Porsche used for two years to develop their fourwheel drive system. It’s here for me to hopefully give it a full resto, but that’s a meeting for tomorrow. I’ll be working with the Jensen Museum, like we are with the other Vignale cars. We
telegraph. co.uk/carsnews letter