Nigel Webbs Jaguar MKVII tow car

[goodwoodweirdo]

Hi guys, does anyone know more about Nigel Webbs tow car, yes the car is awesome but I’m especially interested in, what looks like a Oxygen installation, apparently he drove it to Hillary’s base camp @17.000 ft whilst doing the Peking Paris rally ’07..

How do you convert a car for high altitude and will the same work for a diesel ? I don’t find anything on the net referring to his car. Anything out there in the Jag world….

I’ve read Nigel Webb built a Hawthorne replica , didn’t someone else on PH do the same ? funny enough I have a news paper from the day of the crash, it was found, lining a old trunk I brought at auction a few years ago….


Cheers
Matt

[davepoth]

Turbodiesel should work quite well up high - the turbo is capable of sucking in enough air to make it run properly (the reduced air pressure will just mean the wastegate opens later)

[lowdrag]

Nigel Webb's Mk VII is well known, and somewhere I have a photo of it racing still with the Peking plates on. Nigel has, over the years, recreated a complete replica of the car Hawthorn died in, his Mk1, and went so far as to ask the DVLA to sell the plate 881 VDU, the reverse of the original car which was cut into pieces at the request of the family. I have perhaps now come across VDU 883, which was a Jaguar demonstrator, but more on that another day.

But back to the Mk VII; Brian Read near Coventry did a lot of the work but it was finished off elsewhere. I do have more history on it but will have to search.

[RW774]

Tony, I heard you had sold it to Nigel. VDU was only issed for 3/6 months of 57
mostly around october.I would have been interested it that........

[lowdrag]

Ah, but I heard about it from someone in France here and he is the owner, the car is in the UK and so until I get paperwork and where we can pick up the wreck and how much etc. I am rather stuck.

ETA:- knew I had it somewhere. XK50 weekend Donington

Edited by lowdrag on Sunday 3rd October 09:08

[a8hex]

as a tow car



this was at Goodwood in 2008 at the XK trackday, although I think he'd brought a ridiculously quite Mk2 along that day. Sorry, I didn't get a shot of it actually towing.

[RW774]

Hi Tony, either way look forward to hearing more about it.I`ll forget the gossip.
He`s a good lad at any rate.