AFTER THE reams of textwhich have been published around the automotive world this year commemorating the centenary of Jaguar Cars, you could probably be forgiven for feeling pretty well clued-up on the firm’s motorsport history. From XKs powering to victory in 1950s European rallying to C-Types at Le Mans and on through the wide-arched XJ-C to the XJR racers of the modern era, it’s all pretty well documented.
What you won’t have read too much about though is Jaguar’s place in the history of drag racing but this month we’ve been lucky enough to meet a man who took Jaguar’s XK engine to the top of the tree in a sport more often dominated by American iron. And as you can see from our photos, Brian Thomas is still very much in tune with the idea of going very fast behind a Jaguar engine.
Brian’s enthusiasm for Jaguar goes right back to his teenage years when as a young apprentice fabricator welder one of his duties was to clean the boss’s Mk2 twice weekly. That the car’s owner kept a set of winter studded tyres in the stores and frequently campaigned
