Vivid Past – RoyalAuto February 2017

Growing up in England, Charles Scott and his neighbours Michael and Peter Sargent indulged their passion for speed on a private road near their home in Surrey called Bishop’s Walk, for them more accurately Boys’ Raceway.

The trio built a rudimentary car needing a team effort to drive: one steering, one pumping fuel and the third in the all-important role of ballast.

Charles was perhaps channelling his great-uncle, who invented the Scott two-stroke water-cooled motorcycle.

As the years passed a passion for Jaguars developed, fuelled by his friend Peter Sargent’s racing exploits, including fifth place at Le Mans in 1962 in an E-type.

In something of a tribute to this friendship, Charles bought an XK120 Jaguar after moving to Australia. Then in 1990 his E-type joined the family – a 1967 ‘Series 1½’, it’s a distinctive midnight blue.

So distinctive that, the year after buying it, Charles learned more about the car’s pedigree when a man approached him at a Melbourne car show. “The Jaguar was displayed with 30 other E-types when a man asked me for the engine number,” Charles says. “Turns out he’d owned the car in the UK, brought it to Australia and sold it in 1976. He’d recognised it immediately.”   

_{Story: Tony Lupton
Photos: Shannon Morris
Published: RoyalAuto February 2017}