1966 was a very good year for England, we had just won the world cup and everything was pretty good. From the middle of the country, one Birmingham based company was about to release one of the most beautiful cars ever built. The Jensen Interceptor.

Built around a stock CV8 chassis the car had a Vignale styled body and a massive 6.3 litre Chrysler V8. All of this power was churned through a Torqueflite three speed box and a live rear axle, despite this handling was good. The shape was a first, the massive rear window, sleek lines. The car was as good as it got at the time.

I remember when I was 7, my dad had a 1969 Jensen Interceptor Mk2. This thing was very big, very fast and very consumptive. It had finger light PAS (like nearly all interceptors) electric front windows (a novelty to me!) and Air conditioning. A lot of S type bits were in there as well, such as the rocker switches and Jageur gauges. Driving out of the garage on collection day my dad nearly wrote the thing off. He had been used to the power of the 3.0 Capri Ghia auto we had (another nice motor) and had floored the Jensen as he would the Capri, alas, the back end span right round leaving my dad feeling a bit of a prat, anyway, he got it home and we never looked back. Average mpg was 8 or so and I can remember the back having these nifty little storage pockets down by the seats on each side. An amazing car which we unfortunately got rid of to finance a 4 year old Renault 25 GTS, if I had had my way I would have liked it to have been kept in the garage where I could have slowly restored it.

The Interceptor was a car of firsts. The first 4 wheel drive road car and the first ever car to be fitted with anti-skid brakes, the FF or Ferguson Formula was a car of firsts and promptly scooped 'Car of the Year' 1967. The braking system was by Dunlop and was known as the Maxaret system.

Mark 1 gave way to mark 2 and a new interior, purists hate the interior but I quite like it. Mark 3 models were the start of the downhill run for Jensen. 7.2 litre engines in the midst of a looming energy crisis, very nice! the cars became difficult to start, air con played up and they were no longer reliable. The SP or Six pack had three twin choke webers which gave 300 + Bhp performance, problem was it went out of tune quickly and used petrol like it was water.