Thank Frankel it’s Friday: What’s the ultimate vintage tow car?
Andrew Frankel
Yesterday someone kindly sent me an image of Martin Overington refuelling his supercharged 4.5-litre Bentley complete with the brand new Bentley Continental GT3 car he was towing to Silverstone at the time. Long of wheelbase, even longer of torque, an old Bentley is actually pretty much the perfect tow car just so long as you’re prepared to accept the brakes aren’t really up to slowing the car itself, let alone the tonne and a half it’s towing. But as someone who’s used to racing a Bentley with no front brakes at all, you just leave a little more room and usually all will be fine.
Of course Martin is not the first person to twig that a Bentley is a pretty useful tow car: veteran car club stalwart Johnny Thomas was often seen arriving in the paddock born by his vintage Bentley to be joined shortly thereafter by the Napier race car he was towing. Alain de Cadenet is another: he used to tow his De Cadenet Lola to Le Mans behind a white Transit van, but one year it was so heavily laden with tools and spares the van couldn’t manage the additional load. So he sent it on ahead and towed the Lola to Le Mans behind his Speed Six Bentley.
And I’ll never forget seeing a Bugatti Type 46 with a 5.4-litre straight eight engine towing a Type 35 with an engine of less than half the size. It’s probably the most magnificent two car combo I’ve ever seen in race track paddock.
There are other advantages of using an old car for towing. A few years back I was lucky enough to be racing at the Le Mans classic and our tow car was a rare but not particularly valuable Alfa Romeo Giulia estate. Rather cleverly its owner had it painted in the livery of Monzeglio Squadra Corse and scrawled Servizio E Assistenza down its flanks. You couldn’t have bought the kind of access that car gained us. We spent the entire weekend being waved through barriers without a pass to our name, desperately trying to stifle our giggles until we were out of sight.
It’s all made me wonder what would be the perfect old car in which to turn up in a race car paddock with a tow hitch on the back. Despite all I’ve said, I think it should be affordable, unexpected, entirely fit for purpose but also and most crucially, inextricably connected to racing in its own right. Which rules out at least 95 per cent of the big old barges you might otherwise turn to.
And after much deliberation, I don’t think I can improve upon a Jaguar Mk VII. It would be supremely comfortable and with a mildly tuned straight six twin-cam under the bonnet, more than capable of hauling at least a tonne of race car around without even noticing it. It would offering a convivial surrounding but most of all, that vital connection to racing: Mk VIIs made implausibly capable touring cars, as their multiple victories in the Daily Express International Trophy in the 1950s shows so well, and not just because Stirling could often be found at the wheel.
All that remains to be decided is what you’d tow behind it. Really it should also be relevant to the Mk VII in both name and approximate era, so I guess you’d be looking at a C or D-Type. But just for the unpredictability, I think it would be fun (not to mention rather less expensive) to use a product from one of the many small race car constructors whose cars of the 1950s used Jaguar power: a Cooper, Tojeiro, HWM or Lister to my way of thinking. Or did I miss something?
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