This strikingly handsome 1938 car is far less well known than the post-war products of the Jensen company – but it serves to confirm the supreme skills of the Jensen brothers.
In 1926 young Alan Jensen (1906-1994) and his brother Richard Jensen (1909-1977) built a new boat-tailed sporting body on one of the first Austin Seven Chummy models. This body was seen by Alfred Herbert Wilde, chief engineer of the Standard Motor Company. He persuaded Alan Jensen to join New Avon Body Company, closely associated with Standard, and under Wilde’s patronage Alan Jensen designed the first Standard Avon open two-seaters produced from 1929 to 1933. Alan went on to design two more cars for Avon then moved with his brother to Joe Patrick’s Austin dealership Edgbaston Garage Limited, Bournbrook, in a building still standing next to the University of Birmingham campus. Joe was setting up a coachbuilding operation. The Jensen brothers made handsome bodies for the new Wolseley Hornet and Hornet Special chassis – but the cars were advertised as The Patrick Special and so in 1931 the brothers moved again, this time to the lorry body maker W. J. Smith & Sons in Carters Green in West Bromwich, again to build bodies for small sports cars, including more Wolseley Hornet Specials. This time, their own name was on the product. In 1934 Smith died and the brothers bought a controlling shareholding and later changed the name to Jensen Motors Limited.
In 1934 the Jensens were commissioned by American film actor Clark Gable to design and build a car for him based on a Ford V-8 chassis. The resultant car stimulated huge interest in their work, including a deal with Ford to produce a run of Jensen-Fords. In the same year, they also started to design their first true production car under the name White Lady. This evolved into the Jensen S-Type which went into production in 1935.
The S-Type Jensen used steel Ford chassis parts and Ford’s flathead V8 engine in 2,227cc (with rather disappointing performance) or 3,622cc capacity. It was equipped with two downdraft carburettors and Vertex ignition. The dual-ratio Columbia overdrive rear axle provided six forward gears and a very high top ratio of 2.9:1, equating 70mph to a leisurely 2,200rpm.
Three aluminium bodies were available: saloon, convertible – and the dual cowl ‘Phaeton’ tourer that is the subject of our Snapshot. Production of all S-Types was around 50 cars, but only around eight of these tourers were made and only four or so survive.
Image courtesy of Guy Loveridge
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