EAST COAST HOME BREW

When ambitious racer Walt Hansgen was unable to buy a new Jaguar C-type, he set out to build his own. How does it measure up?

- JULIAN BALME

W hen Walter Edwin 'Walt' Hansgen was bitten by the racing bug, it bit hard. He wasn't that young 32 when he made his debut but he was hugely ambitious, and certainly not there to make up the numbers. Initially, the blue-blazered East Coast racing establishment was wary of this aggressive upstart from New Jersey, his presence right from the off unsettling the cosy, gentlemanly atmosphere prevalent in the early post-war years of sports-car racing in the USA. Walt's first major race in 1951 at the upstate New York road course of Watkins Glen set the tone.

The 6.6-mile loop at the foot of Seneca Lake crossed the New York Central Railroad tracks two-thirds of the way down the suitably named Railroad Straight. At one of the fastest sections of the circuit, the open crossing with exposed rails was a punishing assault on suspension and anything else hanging beneath - because cars could be airborne for several yards. Within a few laps of the grandly named Watkins Glen Grand Prix, Hansgen's silver XK120, in only its second outing, shed an exhaust mounting. Undeterred, he got back to the pits where a team member set to work with baling wire. With the exhaust lashed up, Walt tore back into the 15-lapper in hot pursuit of his class rival, Sherwood Johnson, in a similar black Jaguar.