1953 HWM Jaguar

I photographed this car in the paddock at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1995, but it does not appear to have taken part in any race at this meeting.

It's a 1953 HWM Jaguar - there was an HWM Jaguar in the 1950s Sports Car Race here, but it was a 1957 car driven by Douglas Jamieson. YPG 3 did compete in the 1992 meeting at Silverstone where it was driven by Clive Rides. John Heath and George Abecassis, partners at Hersham and Walton Motors, had built Alta powered cars which they raced in the 1948 and 1949 seasons, then for the 1950 season they built three Alta powered cars that could be adapted to race in both Formula 2 and sports car events and with which they could spend the season travelling from race to race on the continent. That season they took part in 20 international events over 27 weeks commuting backwards and forwards to run their garage whilst the team took the cars to the next meeting and prepared them for racing. Other drivers were taken on to drive the third car, including a 20 year old Stirling Moss who had previously only raced a 500cc F3 Cooper. Despite their lack of power compared to the other cars they enjoyed a relatively successful season. For the 1951 season the HWMs became proper F2 single seaters and they continued their European exploits over the next three years with the help of drivers such as Peter Collins, Harry Schell and Paul Frère. In 1953 John Heath and George Abecassis fitted a Jaguar engine to a modified HWM F2 chassis and gave it an all-enveloping two-seater body to compete in sports car racing. Originally given the registration number HWM 1 it was later given the number YPG 3 and is the car shown in the photograph above. This car was driven by George Abecassis in the 1954 Mille Miglia race but failed to finish - his co-driver was motoring journalist Denis Jenkinson, who was co-driver for Stirling Moss in the winning Mercedes-Benz 300SLR the following year. Several more sports car were built by HWM, some of which are still active in historic racing, but the HWM team lost most of its impetus with the death of John Heath in the 1956 Mille Miglia.