Like herding Big Cats
Three locally-built Jaguar XJSs raced in Australia across the Group C and A eras (the cars of John Goss, Garry Willmington and John Clinton) and Gillard drove all three and worked on two of them.
As detailed in the previous issue, Gillard was drafted into the Goss 1980 XJS effort at the last minute as co-driver and mechanic to provide additional preparation assistance.
“It took a little while for Gossy’s guys to be comfortable with me as they saw me as the ring-in sent to sort things out,” he remembers. “When you move into someone else’s territory in a situation like that you’ve got to be careful because you’re treading on other peoples’ toes. Things were a bit strained there anyway as none of them had had any sleep and the car was still a long way from being a racecar.
“It was the ex-JRA Unipart car, an auto. There actually wasn’t a manual version of the XJS available in Australia, so the gearbox they were using came out of an E-Type. The engine was at Peter Molloy’s being nished, and it had mechanical fuel-injection, a Bosch 12 cylinder system the same as they were using on Ferraris. It was a pretty good motor, pretty good horsepower. It turns up, it’s in the back of a ute. I’m looking at it as the guys are unloading it, and I’m thinking that with the mechanical fuel pump hanging off it, it’s going to hit the chassis rail. So we measured it – and it wouldn’t t in the car. It was unfortunate but it was just one of those oversights that can happen when you’re rushed like we were.”
The race was less than two weeks away. The team called a quick meeting and it was decided the only thing to do was to put the standard engine back in, without the emissions gear and
air-conditioning, baffle the sump and build a decent exhaust for it.
“We took the sump off to make the baffle, and there’s three broke valve springs in the bottom of the sump… So we had to
x all that too. We still had to do all the pedals, because it didn’t have a clutch pedal because it had been an automatic. By this stage, before the car had even been started up, everyone else is at Bathurst practising and we’re still in the workshop.
“We were always up against it given how late everything was, but I thought it was a car that had potential. It turned in alright, it stopped alright. Even with the standard engine, it was a pretty fast car on Conrod Straight once it got wound up. I remember coming out of Forrest’s Elbow, and Bobby Morris is there in his Falcon, and he’s rushed up on me out of the corner – he was still 400 yards faster on the straight, but once the Jag got wound up the Falcon wasn’t really pulling away.”
Six years later Gillard got involved in helping John Clinton get his white XJS Group A-ready.
“Clinton had been in the Ford Laser Series, that’s how I knew him. He had a beard down to his knees – he’d have to roll it up and put it in his balaclava before they’d let him race as a safety issue in case it caught on re.
“He decided to do a Jaguar with [Jaguar dealer] Roley Walker. Then he had a bit of a blue with them and then got me involved. It needed lots of work; the motor wouldn’t run
properly, and this was in the bad all days of electronic fuel injection before you had things like Motecs. Nobody knew anything about the computer and we couldn’t get one out of JRA.
“I got it going half alright, running it up and down a side road at Ballina out the back of the workshop, with a mechanic sitting on the oor screwing things into the computer trying to get it doing what we wanted.
“There were a lot of things to do on it, they were running out of time and Clinton was running out of money. I drove it at Surfers Paradise but it was rubbing wheels on guards and it wasn’t quick, so I withdrew from the deal.”
Clinton’s XJS didn’t make it to Bathurst that year, but Garry Willmington’s did – and Gillard almost ended up co-driving it.
“Not many people know this, but Willmington and Peter Janson, his co-driver, were having an argument about money and on Saturday afternoon Janson was out of the deal.
“Willmington rounded me up and we went to see Ivan Stibbard in the ARDC office and he says, ‘He’s raced a Jaguar here before,’ and Ivan says ‘OK,’ and they do all the paperwork and now I’m the co-driver. This was Saturday afternoon. I had actually driven Garry’s car before, at a practice day at Oran Park, but only for a couple of laps.
“But then the situation between Janson and Willmington got resolved, and Janson was back in. So I was the co-driver for about two hours on Saturday night!
“In the end I was kind of glad I didn’t drive. In the race Garry was right near Mike Burgmann when he had his fatal crash. He saw it all happen right in front of him.”