INTERVIEW: Rowan Atkinson on racing his remarkable Jaguar Mark VII

A Jaguar Mark VII isn’t the sort of racing car anyone goes looking for specifically, and that was the case for Rowan. When he saw it in the Bonhams|Cars catalogue, it was the fascinating history that attracted him. It had been converted to a racing car early in its life and has stayed that way ever since. 

“What was most interesting was why the car exists,” said Atkinson. “It was one of only two magnesium alloy bodied cars the Jaguar racing department made in the mid-’50s. They took the steel body off the chassis and they put this magnesium body on.

“They did that on two cars, and then the Mark 1 came along and they decided that was going to be their racing saloon. So they went with that, and they planned to scrap these two magnesium bodied cars. 

“Bob Berry, who was the PR director of Jaguar at the time, saw them outside the racing department with big yellow crosses on them, designating them scrap. He said, ‘Do you mind if I have one of these?’ So he took [what would later become] my car, KRW 621, painted it green and went racing with it in the late 1950s. He ‘stole’ a lot of bits off the Jaguar D-type and he used to race both. He used to race a D-type and my Mark VII in the same meetings.”  

When Atkinson successfully bid on the car it was being sold by a Harley Street dentist, and he believes that he was the only owner in between. The dentist raced the Jaguar into the 1970s. The special magnesium body survives to this day, trimming 200kg from the car. Weight loss was never taken to the extreme; the leather and wood trim remains in place to maintain the drawing-room-on-wheels ambience.

It’s the perfect metaphor for Atkinson’s approach to motor racing. “I’ve never really taken it seriously enough,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed it, but I haven’t really devoted myself to it. It’s like golf or clay pigeon shooting or something. You’ll never be any good unless you do it a lot — and I’ve done it very little. Whenever I get in the car it’s like starting again. If I took it more seriously, I’d be looking for a competitive car. You would never choose a Jaguar Mark VII if you wanted to win a race.”

That’s certainly true now, but in its day the Mark VII was surprisingly competitive. “The Mark VII was a bizarrely versatile racing saloon of the 1950s,” explained Atkinson. “Despite its gargantuan size it won the Monte Carlo rally in 1954.” As well as its success on the stages, it was also victorious on track and Stirling Moss was one of its most famous drivers.

“Stirling used to say it’s more like yachting than driving,” Atkinson said. “When he used to race in Mark VIIs here [in period], they had a bench seat rather than two single seats in the front so you would slide across the car on a right-hand corner. He used to have to brace himself with his left foot against the passenger door in order to stop himself sliding.”

Keeping out of the way of faster cars and avoiding crashing are Atkinson’s primary objectives when racing. “As a lot of people have said, unless you win a race, no-one ever remembers how you did, all they remember is whether you crashed or not. I just enjoy the challenge of trying to go round corners and go around the track slightly quicker this lap than you did last lap.”

For the past ten years, Atkinson has only raced at Goodwood and scarcely driven the car on the road in between. “I should have done more and then I might be better at what I do.” 

When Atkinson first bought the Mark VII, it was finished in silver and he raced it here in that guise, sharing it with Moss. Towards the end of one of those early St. Mary’s Trophy races, the straight-six engine started to suffer. “I thought if I was going to rebuild the engine, I may as well rebuild the car.” That was when it was returned to its green colour.  

As part of the rebuild process, Atkinson got the lowdown from its original creator. “I went to see Bob Berry at his house in Leamington Spa. This was 2003 or 2004. He’s dead now, but it was good to continue to catch him while I could.”  

The Mark VII remains road registered, which led our conversation to meander into the topic of road cars. Atkinson famously has a connoisseur’s collection of cars that, for many years, included a McLaren F1. While there’s nothing else of the Jaguar’s era in the stable, he does have the 1970s Aston Martin Vantage from Johnny English Strikes Again and has a preference for modern classics over anything that’s brand new. 

“Real moderns I find very, very difficult to enjoy because of all the beeping and the bonging,” he said. “The active safety features have gone just a bit too far for me. You can select those ones where it’s easiest to switch the stuff off but there’s still a weight penalty and a technology penalty, which is a penalty I don’t really want to pay.

"My feeling is that the best modern cars are around ten to 15 years old.” Road sign assist is a particular bugbear: “Whenever you hear or read the word ‘assist’, you know that something infuriating, which doesn’t assist you at all, has been installed.”

There’s no fear of the Mark VII attempting to assist with road signs, or much else for that matter. But it is a surprisingly benign machine despite its size and weight. “It’s a pretty improbable racing car, it’s like a minibus,” Atkinson described.

“We’ve stiffened it up a little bit on the front, so it's a little less roly poly than it was. It actually corners remarkably flat. We’ve also rebuilt the engine to how it originally was, and that’s all we’ve done, really. It’s never going to be competitive, but it’s remarkably friendly. 

“But you can’t get over the fact that it weighs one and a half tonnes when a D-type weighs half that. The problem is, that once it goes, it tends to want to carry on going. Bringing it back is a bit challenging sometimes because of the weight. There’s quite a lot of weight to bring back. But at the same time, I’ve always felt safe in it.

“The brakes are remarkably good. They’re the same brakes that I think a lot of people use on lightweight E-types and things. They’re basically from the Jaguar Mark IX. It was the late ’50s version of my car. The body’s the same, but they improved the brakes. They are almost a star feature.”

You could say the same about Atkinson being a star feature of the St. Mary’s Trophy presented by Motul. Since he often finds himself in the celebrity race, which is mostly populated by professional racing drivers, he stands out in a class of his own. Just as his extravagant Jaguar does among a sea of faster cars.

Photography by Joe Harding, Pete Summers, Amy Shore and Drew Gibson.