Jean Todt posted the photograph this afternoon. His Jaguar XK150 3.8 — OS in his words, the open two-seater in Jaguar’s — has been restored by Mark Hews and the CKL team in East Sussex. Delivery at Christmas. “What a beautiful present.”
That is as much caption as a car needs.
CKL has been in this work since 1999: Chris Keith-Lucas’s shop, now with Mark Hews as managing director, looking after the serious 1950s and 1960s Jaguars — XK, C-type, D-type — in-house, from engines to panel and trim. Hews came from P&A Wood. He chairs the Restoration Trailblazer group and keeps Heritage Skills Academy apprentices on the tools. In July a CKL Jaguar C-type took Best in Show at the Royal Automobile Club concours.
The XK150 was the last of the XK line, built in Coventry from 1957 until the E-Type arrived in 1961. The 3.8 litre engine came in 1959. Just over nine thousand XK150s left Browns Lane; a little over two thousand of those were open two-seaters. We will not pretend to know the chassis, the colour name, or whether this car is an S. The photograph is enough.
Todt needs no introduction in a room that talks about cars. Peugeot Talbot Sport. Ferrari in the Schumacher years. President of the FIA. He called Hews his friend. That will do.
Square Wheels Lodge exists for classic vehicles and the people who keep them on the road. A finished XK150 in a Sussex workshop, about to go for Christmas to one of motor sport’s central figures, is exactly the sort of thing we like to put on the table.