Special effect

THERE WAS nothing clever or cryptic about the name Jaguar gave its new variant of XK 120 in 1951, because SE literally meant Special Equipment. However, considering the higher specification the package offered, what it lacked in creativity it made up for with accuracy. Together with the more refined fixedhead coupe version that had arrived earlier the same year, the pair transformed the XK 120 from a simple sports car into something more refined, the kind of car for which the company would later become synonymous. No example exemplifies this as successfully as the final one produced in 1954 and no owner was as suited to the car as its first.

By all accounts, Alex Henshaw was a genuine British hero, the sort that boys would have read about during the Forties and Fifties in or comics. Born in Peterborough on 7 November 1912, he learnt to fly at the Skegness and East Lincolnshire Aero Club in 1932. Although funded by his wealthy father (who later bought his son a de Havilland Gypsy Moth), Henshaw Jnr was clearly a natural in the air, soon making a name for himself in