1957 - Lot 22

Lot n° 22

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Estimation :

25000 - 30000 EUR

Result with fees

Result : 15 996EUR

1957 - Lot 22

1957 BORWICK & SONS Lawless-Jaguar project Model: KD 800 Class Type: 3-point Racer Length : 5,40 m Width: 2.30 m Weight: approx. 800 kg Number of seat(s): 1 Destination engine : Jaguar XK 150 Type: 6 cylinders in line Displacement: 3,8 l. Power: approx. 210 hp In Great Britain in the 1950s, record-breaking motorboating can be summed up in a few key words: Lake Windermere, the Campbell family and Norman Buckley. The latter was a wealthy gentleman driver who set out to break several world speed records in the 800 kg and over category with a series of large racers called Miss Windermere. Lake Windermere, in Cumbria, is one of the few inland water bodies in the United Kingdom large enough and sheltered enough, like its neighbor Coniston Water, where the most ambitious motorboat attempts, such as those of Buckley and his friend Donald Campbell, can take place. Between the 1940s and 1970s, a small performance-oriented ecosystem grew up around these two people and these two lakes, attracting speed enthusiasts, especially from motor racing. To succeed, Buckley surrounded himself with a team that included his brother-in-law, engineer Arthur Henderson, and Borwick's of Bowness. In 1957, when Buckley had just broken a new series of world records the previous year at the wheel of Miss Windermere III, Borwick's built a brand new prototype with lines inherited from those of the unbeatable American Ventnor three-pointers, but much more modern than the previous ones, of which Miss Windermere III was the archetype. This state-of-the-art racer in the 800 kg class was built for the account of the racing driver J.H. Lafone, an Allard specialist. The project called Lawless, which initially included the assembly of a Ford-Edelbroc V8, was not carried out, because a Jaguar XK 150 3.8-liter 6-cylinder engine was preferred. This high-potential racer remained at Borwick's shipyard for eighteen months, while Norman Buckley's new record-breaking boat Miss Windermere IV was built on exactly the same plans and using the templates prepared for Lawless, its sister-ship and prototype. While Miss Windermere IV allowed Buckley to break several world records with Jaguar engines until the early 1970s, the fate of Lawless is more discreet. We only know the names of the two drivers who successively acquired it, Harry Dennison in 1959 and then Ron Beaty, who equipped it with a 4.2-litre 6-cylinder Jaguar E-Type in the late 1960s. Like many important racers, Lawless was stripped of its engine in the 1980s and then abandoned while its glorious alter-ego Miss Windermere IV was restored and featured in the permanent collections of the Windermere Museum. Lawless was found in the 1990's by an English enthusiast and Jean Van Praet acquired her, without engine but still equipped with a large part of her fittings, her builder's plate and many original parts. The new project began with the reconstruction of the hull, scrupulously identical, with every original piece of wood being dismantled and copied. The objective being to give back to this racer all its potential of speed, it could not be question of preserving certain old elements of the structure for obvious reasons of safety. Jean Van Praet then hesitated between two possibilities, the restoration of Lawless or the transformation into a replica of Miss Windermere IV, option advised against by Norman Buckley's admirers... In both cases, this exciting and already well advanced project includes the installation of a Jaguar XK 150 engine, while the original Lawless gearbox, useless in a car, was miraculously found under the workbench of a workshop in the vicinity of Windermere by a great English collector who gladly gave it to his French colleague.

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1957 - Lot 22

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