Simon Taylor Full throttle
‘At a wet Silverstone test session he talked his way into one of the D-types, and was 2.5 secs faster than the works drivers’
If you think about it, it’s quite rare for a senior motor industry figure to have a racing reputation as well. When Bob Berry died in January, aged 91, most obituaries focused on his 30-year career with Jaguar. But he’d also shown himself to be a racer of remarkable speed and courage, and if he’d made a different decision at a crucial time he might well have become a household name on the track. In 1951, as a student at Cambridge, he and his sister Jacquie borrowed their father’s Jaguar MKV for a Continental holiday, taking in the Le Mans 24 Hours. Bob’s mother was French, and he was bilingual. Fielding three of the sensational new C-types, Jaguar had what would now seem a ludicrously small team; when hardpressed mechanic John Lea had to change an engine after practice, Bob offered to hold the spanners and Jacquie got the tea. Come the race, as Jaguar scored a historic victory, Bob helped out on the pit counter, under the stern eye of team manager Lofty England.
By then fascinated by all things Jaguar, Bob and Jacquie drove on to watch the Alpine Rally and cheer on NUB 120, the XK120 of Ian and Pat Appleyard. They came across the white XK halted at a tyre depot, with a difficult conversation going on about some new rubber that hadn’t turned up. Bob intervened and, explaining the position to the tyre man in French, sorted out the problem. NUB 120 duly finished the rally unpenalised.
When he got home, Bob found a letter from Lofty offering him an apprenticeship. He told his parents, to their dismay, that he was abandoning his studies and moving to Coventry. It was the start of a long climb up the Jaguar ladder. He was at Le Mans for all of the firm’s victories, timekeeping and using his language skills to sort out problems with the organisers. He chased the Stirling Moss/norman Dewis C-type across Italy in the 1952 Mille Miglia with a spares-laden MKVII, and organised the Montlhéry sortie when an XK120 coupé averaged 100mph for seven days and nights.
Meanwhile Bob had bought an old XK120 himself, lightened it with a redundant magnesium shell from one of the works XKS, and started competing on his own account, frequently beating C-types. During a wet test session at Silverstone he talked his way into one of the new D-types, and was 2.5 secs faster than the works drivers. Then private entrant Jack Broadhead hired him to drive his ex-works D-type, OKV 2, and he immediately became a force in British racing.
Work precluded overseas events, but Bob took a holiday to race in Portugal. The transporter broke down in northern France, so he stuffed a few tools into the D-type and drove it 980 miles, virtually non-stop, to the track. He ran third in the race until an oil leak slowed him.
Then at Goodwood, leading the Whitsun Trophy ahead of Ron Flockhart and Mike Hawthorn, he got off-line at Fordwater and had a very big accident, putting himself in hospital for six weeks. That was when boss Sir William Lyons gave him an ultimatum: give up Jaguar, or give up racing.
He chose the latter, and rose to be a trusted member of Sir William’s top team. His tasks included marketing and publicity, and he played a major role in launching game-changers such as the E-type and the XJ6.
Then Jaguar became part of British Leyland, and everything was different. Sir William and Lofty retired, and Bob found himself deputy managing director of Jaguar-rover-triumph. The old family atmosphere of Jaguar had sunk without trace. In 1980 he was headhunted by Alfa Romeo and left with relief mixed with regret at the loss of Jaguar’s identity, and with a lot of memories. No doubt one of them was that drive over the Pyrenees and down through Spain to Portugal, flat-out in a D-type.