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"I interviewed the driver from the Tourist Trophy
Garage shortly after the accident. He confessed to me that he hated driving the car as it had spun on him twice before Michael's fatal
crash. In his opinion the power generated was too much for the tyres to absorb"
Mike had raced Jaguar saloons only four times, all at Silverstone; he won in 1955 (Mk VII), failed to finish with the new 2.4 saloon in
1956, but won in 1957 with the new 3.4 and again in 1958 with VDU 881, the 3.4 saloon in which he was eventually to die.
Had he lived, the New Year of 1959 would have been an exceptionally busy one for John Michael Hawthorn. The latter part of 1958
had brought the new World Champion many more offers of business, sponsorship and product endorsement.
VDU 881 was loaned to him while he was racing for Jaguar, Lofty England allowing him to continue
using it afterwards. Chassis number S970806DN, it was the 806th right hand drive 3.4
saloon built, British Racing Green with a suede green interior and first registered on
October 3rd 1957 by Jaguar Cars Ltd.
Mike Hawthorn outside the Tourist Trophy Garage in 1958 with his Jaguar 3.4L Mk 1, VDU 881
No special remarks are recorded in Jaguar's chassis
record book, just that it was "On loan to Mike Hawthorn"; it appears to have started
life as a perfectly normal car with overdrive and pressed steel wheels. Not even high
ratio steering featured.
Lofty told us that Hawthorn didn't want the heavier steering as he intended to "steer it on the throttle."
VDU was subsequently modified by Ted Papsch at Hawthorn's own Tourist Trophy Garage (whether tuning work was also carried out
by Jaguar is unclear).
Ted Papsch had moved to England as the Wermacht invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia and eventually
obtained a job with the Hawthorns, becoming joint works foreman at TT Garages (his first task there had been to assemble and refit a
Ferrari engine another employee had stripped. "I was quaking in my boots but I pressed on and completed the job without any
problems", he recalls).
Michael presented Papsch with VDU for specialist treatment early on. "We set about stripping the Jaguar down almost as soon as
Michael received her. I made a special carrier and shifted the battery from the engine bay to the boot for better weight distribution. I
removed and stripped the engine and replaced the standard 8:1 pistons with 9:1s. Two-inch C-type sand cast carbs and competition
clutch replaced the standard factory parts. No work was carried out to the cylinder head. Heavy-duty front and rear springs, together
with the competition shock absorbers, completed the suspension work.
"The exhaust was replaced with a specifically-manufactured system to assist the gas flow. Ordinary wire wheels replaced the steels on
the front axle and bigger competition wires were fitted to the rear. This increased the track by two inches but unfortunately the wheels
fouled the spats. Subsequently Michael had a local bodyshop modify them to suit."
Although extensive, none of these changes were extreme and most parts used were of a type later catalogued by Jaguar for the 3.4
saloon. They also closely match the modifications described by David Phipps in his road test of the car and indeed credited by him not
to Jaguar but to TT Garages.
However, while not denying the possibility, Lofty England told us that he did not remember Mike Hawthorn telling him about such work
and considered it unlikely that he wouldn't have mentioned it. Later the car was raced and, with the reputation of both Hawthorn and
Jaguar at stake, it surely would have been most unusual if the car had not undergone Jaguar's meticulous preparation procedure. Yet
no records have so far been located at Jaguar covering any works preparation of VDU, although they exist for such as John Coombs'
and Briggs Cunningham's special 3.4 saloons. Maybe factory input was confined to pre-race checkovers?
Tommy Sopwith, Mike's on-track sparring partner, told us: "Michael's Jaguar was similar to mine in many ways although EN 400 was
prepared and tuned by my own garage. I don't remember a great deal about VDU, through I do remember at Silverstone VDU was shod
on Dunlop racing tyres (with the diamond tread pattern). I said to Mike: 'You'll win this one because you have better tyres than mine.'
'"All right', he said,'I'll give you the wheels and tyres after the race!'. That was the biggest compliment he could give, but Lofty would not
let him part with them! "I doubt if any modifications were carried out without Lofty's consent as the car was never Michael's in the first place."
Unfortunately, though, we had a lorry pull up sharply before us resulting in the
Jaguar sliding under the back of the lorry, the back of the flat bed finishing inches from the screen! 'That was close,Ted!' exclaimed
Mike. In seconds we were off again
Mention of tyres highlights a crucial factor in the accident, because for road (not race) use VDU was later fitted not with the usual
Dunlop Road Speed 6.40 x 15 inch crossplies but with Dunlop Duraband radials. Jaguar, of course, had done some pioneering work
with radial tyres as Lofty England reminded us. "The first radial steel-braced tyre Dunlop made was for us to use at Le Mans and it was
called Stabilia. Unlike the Duraband, it was low profile (the first to be used in racing?) and we of course used much higher pressures
than those used for road use so it did not have a quick break-away."
The Duraband was not as successful on the road as the Stabilia had been on the track. It appears that Dunlop were more or less pushed
into offering a radial tyre for road cars in the 1950s to counter the well-established Michelin X and then the Cintura (later
Cinturato) radial from Italy. All these early radial tyres suffered from a more abrupt break-away than a similar crossply, particularly in the
wet, and by reputation the Duraband was a worse offender in this respect. "Really only suitable for A40s at 60mph," one driver of the
period observed, while Rob Walker's opinion is that "Durabands were OK in the dry but, because of the hard compound, they could
break away in wet conditions. When they did, it was without warning and complete.".
Ted Papsch had some experience with the 3.4 on the road. "I drove the car several times on my own and as a passenger with Michael
at the wheel. I found it good to drive, with acceptable road holding qualities. It was far quicker than the average 3.4.
"I remember accompanying Michael in VDU across Bagshot and through Staines, before the bypass was built. We topped speeds of
140mph in some areas, though I still felt quite safe. Unfortunately, though, we had a lorry pull up sharply before us resulting in the
Jaguar sliding under the back of the lorry, the back of the flat bed finishing inches from the screen! 'That was close,Ted!' exclaimed
Mike. In seconds we were off again.
"I believe that car had to be taken over to the Dunlop factory where a new brand of tyre was fitted. I don't remember
any problem with the road adhesion throughout the time Michael had VDU which was over a year. Therefore I suspect the
Duraband tyres must have been fitted shortly before his death."
The Menu from the National Sporting Club Dinner to celebrate Mike Hawthorn's World Championship - it was held on 19th January 1959.
On the 22nd January, Mike was killed. It's signed by Mike and by Donald Campbell. Select to view a larger image
Bill Fields was assistant works foreman at the Tourist Trophy Garage for many years and the car made a big impression on him too.
"Having driven VDU many times, I found the car very potent. Michael and I went up to Coventry so that he could test the 'E' prototype
for Jaguar. I brought VDU back home and found that it would easily 'see off' most other cars."
Mr A J Russell, reporter for the Surrey News at the time of the accident, told us that "I interviewed the driver from the Tourist Trophy
Garage shortly after the accident. He confessed to me that he hated driving the car as it had spun on him twice before Michael's fatal
crash. In his opinion the power generated was too much for the tyres to absorb."
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Others too found the car downright intimidating, including motoring journalist and photographer David Phipps, then associate editor of
Motor Racing. His road test of VDU appeared shortly before the accident, in the February 1959 edition of that magazine, and it was
strangely prophetic. Phipps described the Jaguar's "tremendous acceleration, especially in second gear, and instead of the forward
surge abating as frontal area asserts itself the car hurtles onwards in third and top gears until, at around 5,000rpm in top, a flick of the
overdrive control "switches off" a thousand rpm. Maximum speed is something in excess of 120mph (Mike has seen over 130mph), but
at this velocity the 3.4 became a little unstable due, perhaps, to the undulating road surface."
Continued Phipps in what turned out to be an unwitting - and unheeded - warning: "ln respect of roadholding, the 3.4 can be driven round
corners extremely fast but it really needs a Hawthorn to get the best out of it. For ordinary mortals the combination of a wet road,
spinning rear wheels and a sliding tail can become somewhat overawing, particular as the relatively low geared steering calls for rather
a lot of wheel twirling when correction is required."
David Phipps more recently enlarged upon his experiences with the car for us. "I recall taking VDU down the A2, not going
exceptionally fast as the weather conditions weren't that good. When coming off a roundabout, I was forced to take the wrong exit,
because the back end of the car just broke away for no reason. In other words, one had to go wherever the car went! I had a similar
experience with an Aston Martin DB Mk3 borrowed from Stirling Moss I spun it approaching Blackheath roundabout at around 20mph.
It was also shod on Durabands.
"That 3.4 Jaguar was one of those cars I was pleased to get back in one piece. Delivering it to Michael I remarked:
'It's a tremendous car, Mike, but you have to watch it in the
wet, don't you?' He was dismissive. 'Oh, you don't know how to drive it, boy!' was the attitude."
Phipps' test noted that among the car's modifications was a very
low, 4.05:1, axle ratio (this probably should read 4.09), explaining that "Mike's reason for this is simple: he doesn't like being out-accelerated by
'Kraut cars', referring to a well-known species with an unusual method of door opening."
In all, David Phipps' text mentions three crucial factors present in Mike Hawthorn's accident: the 3.4's power, that wet conditions greatly
magnified the difficulty of controlling it, and Hawthorn's aversion to being behind a 300SL. All three of those factors fatally interacted on that January
day on the A3.
But Sporting Motorist also made some significant comments after driving VDU late in 1958, though the item was not published until May
1959. "When we tried Mike's 3.4 we had visited him in our own Mk I and reaction was therefore particularly sensitive. The throttle pedal was decidedly sticky and Mike indicated that a lot of care was required in its use. We found it embarrassingly on or off
in relation to the power of the car and inevitably the thought occurs that just at the wrong moment on that tragic day, the throttle was a little more sticky than hitherto."
Mike Hawthorn's final journey took place on the morning of Thursday January 22nd 1959.
He had a lunch appointment in London with the holiday camp man, Billy Butlin, at the Cumberland Hotel. They were to
act as judges in a charity motor scooter event. Then he would be on his way to the Westbury Hotel where he would meet
Louise Collins - she had just returned from completion of a tour in the USA with 'Romanoff and Juliet'. He wasn't
scheduled to meet his Fiancee, Jean Howarth, that day as she had gone back to Huddersfield to stay with her parents.
The following weekend, she and Mike were to go to Paris to see his Lawyer and arrange a settlement on Mike's
illegitimate son.
After that it was off to meet his great mate Duncan Hamilton where they were to conclude a business arrangement
to take on Duncan as a
Tourist Trophy Garage partner. His final appointment was as guest of honour at the Farnham and District's section of
the Motor Agents Association Annual Dinner, taking place back at the Hogs Back Hotel.
Fate dictated that he never made any of these appointments after leaving his Farnham based Tourist Trophy Garage
that morning - despite knowing the route very well, joining the A31 at Farnham and following it towards Guildford
over the long, straight section known as the Hog's Back.
Although he was not called at the inquest, Major J.L St Clair was quoted by the Daily Telegraph as an early witness
of the 3.4's final journey as it sped towards the junction with the A3:
"He was travelling very fast. I was going slowly because when passing over the
Hog's Back a few minutes earlier, the wind was so fierce it literally forced me across the road and my car, the latest Mk IX, is.. .heavier
than Hawthorn's. I estimated his speed at anything up to 100mph."
The Hog's Back is an elongated hill on the southern rim of a Surrey valley known as the Devil's Punchbowl; from it can be viewed three
further hills, the Devil's Jumps. The A31 here is very exposed to crosswinds. Rob Walker, in a Mercedes 300SL, had just driven over the
Hog's Back too and stated later that "I had never known wind like it in my life."
The A31 then crosses by bridge over the main Portsmouth-London A3 trunk road, and to join the A3 Londonwards you need to peel off
left before the bridge and down onto a short feeder road which leads you on to the A3 northbound. In 1959 the A3 at this point was
a single road approximately 60 foot wide with four lanes, not a separated dual carriageway as it is today; bollards and lamp-posts were in the centre at intervals (see below).
The A3 where the crash occurred. This photo was taken by Paul Roach in 1999 from a bridge that now crosses the two carriageways.
This is the south-running carriageway looking in the direction the two cars were travelling. Back in 1959 this was a single carriageway road, about 60 feet wide,
each road direction having two lanes with illuminated bollards and lamp posts in the centre at intervals. Just past the white van is the right
hand bend where Mike began to lose control, leading into a short straight where the car left the road (on the right and just out of
sight as viewed here). Past that is a gentle left hand bend. See our Google Earth images page for more informative views.
It was as Rob Walker stopped at the A3 junction that he first noticed a dark green Jaguar behind him. As they turned downhill onto the
A3, the Jaguar overtook the Mercedes; at the inquest Walker described to the Borough Coroner, Mr Methold, what happened as the cars accelerated downhill
past Coombs Service Station on their right (that is accelerating towards you in the image below).
Back in 1999, this is the location of the Coombs Service Station that would have been on the
cars right in 1959 (the left hand carriageway was part of four-lane single carriageway road then and had traffic running in both directions in 1959).
Coombs was the building at the far end of the later modern garage.
And another view showing the downhill slope - this is the new opposite modern carriageway but going in the correct direction as Mike was in 1959
Continue to Part 2 - The Crash ...
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