Jaguar pioneer emerges from hibernation
Another month, another historic big-cat discovery. Jaguar restorer and collector Terry Larson from Mesa, Arizona, has unearthed a 1938 Jaguar SS100 that had been off the radar for 60 years. “We are currently doing a sympathetic preservation,” says Larson, “rebuilding the mechanicals to make it operate as new, yet look old. I have restored 10 SS100S over the years and wanted to do something different. This is an interesting challenge.”
The car was sold new in 1938 by Appleyards of Leeds and registered CWT 192. An early owner was DA Russell, an aeromodeller who in 1942 built a 1:5-scale SS100 that he used for tethered racing. CWT 192 was known to have competed at Crystal Palace in 1939.
Owners are recorded in London, Buckinghamshire and Yorkshire, and it is thought that the last keeper in the UK was a US serviceman who took the car back with him. The final UK tax disc, which is still on the car, was from 1957 and some of the tyres were marked ‘Military’.
The Jaguar later came into the possession of John Kupier of Wyckoff, New Jersey. He hardly used it, and two years after he died Larson was able to buy the car from
Kupier’s son Jerry. “My brother and I went with my father when he got it,” says Jerry. “I was 11 and rode in the back. The conditions were icy and we slid off the road and almost hit a house. Dad started a restoration but lost interest and it just sat.”
“The car has some unique features, such as external doorhandles and brackets in the body to allow the strut behind the seat – and the seat itself – to move further back,” says Larson. “This could greatly cut the time it takes to get in and out at checkpoints on rallies.”
Thanks to Jaguar historian Paul Skilleter for his help with this story.