If like me, you're horrendously deaf through driving old cars, listening to loud music or impaired by other means, here's the walk around segment:
MK1 Jensen Interceptor
The MK1 Interceptor is a car to turn heads and when it debuted to an excited audience at Earls Court in 1966, it wasn’t the cheapest of models on display. It was priced at £3,742 and a world away from the traditional models which had come before it.
The car was a bit hit: it was a two door fastback, designed to please and excite with simple definitive lines and best of all, could sit four in comfort; making it both stylish and usable. All in all, the new interceptor, because the name had been used before, was a very different car to the one which had carried the name before.
Hardly surprising, but there’s a lot of Italian styling in this incredible beast. The body wasn’t designed in-house, but rather instead, by Carrozzeria Touring of Italy, who had worked for brands like Maserati, Aston Martin and Lamborghini. This was a brilliant name to be associated with Jensen Motors.
The first of the MK1s were built by Vignale in Italy and a big issue for Jensen was maintaining the quality the brand was known for; coupled by the distance between the UK factory and the Italian arm.
You’ll hear of many manufacturers when I do these videos who seem to frustratingly sit with problems for many months and even years before they make a half cooked decision to improve; this was not so with Jensen.
Production had kicked off in 66 and within no time at all they’d identified that Vignale weren’t hitting their benchmarks of quality and problems from panel gaps to cracks in paintwork had Jensen straight on the case, pulling production back to the UK.
By 1967 when everything landed in the Midlands, the production line had a bit of a job on their hands. The way Vignale had set everything up was very different to how the factory in West Bromwich ran everything and it took a skilled sheet-metal worker several months to work out the complex job of building the body shell to meet the standards Jensen expected.
It’s worth noting at this point that this was a brave move, because Jensen at the time weren’t in a brilliant position. In 1966 the company had made a profit of just over £180k but by 1967, the winds had changed and the company had made a deficit of 52k.
But going back to the build process, it’s worth discussing just how involved it all was. The chassis alone took 44 hours to complete and there was plenty of work from the pillars to the panels to get that shell welded to the chassis to achieve the highly regarded seamless finish.
And as for the paint, there were six undercoats applied and as many layers of top coat. The whole paint process took a WEEK for each car, which probably explains those low volumes for the car! The interior trim took 12 days to complete and that’s before we get onto the engine, gearbox and transmission!
By 1969, all the earlier problems were long behind them and the car was now far more polished; the 69 spec changes included Chryslers E series engine coupled with the torqueflite transmission unit which now had a cushion clutch to reduce snatching giving the driver the ultimate in changing gear: a brilliant smoothness when changing up and down. Tyres were now Dunlop sport as standard and higher output alternators were fitted alongside heated screens replacing the old rear twin-fan demisters.
Production came to an end in 1969 and Autocar came back to re-test the car after initial tests in 66 at launch. The reported top speeds were 0 to 60 in 6.4 seconds and a top speed of 137mph.
The car was replaced with the MK2 in autumn of 1969 and you’ll know it from this MK1 due to the revised styling to front and rear which included tweaks to the area around the head lights, grille and bumper and rear lights.
A little like the MGB and the US essential rubber bumper upgrade, some of the styling internally was also revised to meet American safety requirements.
Now that’s a brief history and a little tech spec, but let’s meet the owner Van and ask why he’s picked a Jensen Interceptor in 2022!