REINVENTION

Browse through YouTube in search of a period road test and you’ll often find posts labelled ‘old Top Gear’, a reference to the era of Woollard and Goffey when it was a serious show earnestly road testing mid-range new models. As we all know, the transition to Clarkson and Wilman took the show in a whole new lighthearted direction which alienated the core traditional viewers yet gained millions of new converts.

And so it was been with so many of our car makers over the years, too. From Lotus selling off the design of its basic Seven and beginning a quest upmarket which would see it aim at Porsche, to Jaguar ditching its retro curves in the new century, car makers have reinvented themselves as often as a teenager starting university. We take a look back at some of the more obvious cases.

JAGUAR

Of all the brand reinventions in automotive history, Jaguar is perhaps the best example and despite what Ford might have wanted to think in the late ’90s, retro was never really the firm’s intended direction.

As has been well documented, William Lyons’ start in the car business was via the Swallow Sidecar company which then expanded into coachbuilt bodies for volume-produced cars and from there into constructing its own complete vehicles.

This explains why the firm’s earlier models were more traditional than ground-breaking, with even the XK120 employing a traditionally constructed body. Alongside the imposing saloon cars though, the firm was pursuing a much more high-tech approach and when the D-Type sports racer broke cover in 1954, it was obvious that wood-framed bodies and separate chassis would soon be consigned to history.

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