This is the first ever Jensen. It is not the first car bodied by Jensen, nor is it the first car to wear a Jensen badge of any sort, but the 1935 White Lady is still the first true Jensen. And it is unique – truly the link-bridge between first coachbuilding, then collaborative car-building, and then the West Bromwich company’s inception as a manufacturer in its own right (though, ironically, with production cars less distinct from those collaborative efforts than this one-off).
By the time The White Lady was created it had already been quite an adventure for the Jensen brothers, Moseleyborn Richard and Alan. As car-obsessed teens, their 1926 sporting rebody of an Austin Seven Chummy led Alan into being drafted into the New Avon Body Co, the coachbuilding wing of Standard that grew out of Avon Coachworks. The brothers then moved together to Joe Patrick’s famous Edgbaston Garage – which would later become better known as Patrick Motors – where they headed up a new coachbuilding department rebodying Wolseleys and the like. The arrangement was shortlived, however, the brothers reportedly disgruntled that they were not sufficiently credited publicly for their work and Patrick reputedly simultaneously furious at the attention the Jensen brothers were getting rather than him. People, hey?
Their next stop was Carters Green commercial body-builder WJ Smith, where they continued to rebody a plethora of British cars from Austin to MG as directors of their
