A pair of Porsches with top-level motor racing provenance

If these two could talk…

Most classic cars have a brilliant tale or two to go with them, but the provenance of the duo sat glinting under a silver-grey sky in the Essex countryside would be matched by very, very few.

We’re gazing in awe at two Porsches 356s with histories like no other. These beautifully restored Stuttgart machines once belonged respectively to Jim Clark, arguably the greatest racing driver of all time, and Denis Jenkinson, arguably the greatest motor sport journalist of all time.

“Clark and Jenks rubbed shoulders regularly as they traversed Europe in racing’s golden era”

The pair rubbed shoulders regularly as they traversed Europe in the late 1950s during racing’s golden era, Clark taking his early steps on the international scene and ‘Jenks’ being there to report on it in his own inimitable style as Motor Sport’s continental correspondent. On one occasion they even pitted Porsche against Porsche by both entering the 1958 Silverstone 6 Hours Relay.

Our scribbler’s ice blue 356 was his ‘man-on-the-move’ calling card, and Clark’s former car was advertised in the pages of this very magazine as his “old friend” passed from one owner to another. Thus, the two cars are indelibly linked with Motor Sport’s story too.

Clark’s ivory white Porsche has probably the greatest sporting provenance of any 356: he took his first official race victory in it, and from there just couldn’t stop winning. It was the pliable racing tool the F1 legend used to announce himself to the world.

The two cars are now owned by enthusiast Tom Pead, who has lovingly restored them to pristine racing condition. Both recently competed at Goodwood.
“I felt the Jim Clark car was the important 356, certainly in Europe, and the Jenks car was almost equal to that – so I thought I’d be greedy and have both!” he jokes, before adding, “And to keep them both in the UK, which was equally as important.”

The Scot’s 356A (rather than a later B or C series) was placed on order December 21, 1956 and left Stuttgart on April 2, 1957. Chassis 100017, with registration UUL 442, was first purchased from London Porsche dealer AFN by the famous 1950s band leader Billy Cotton of Red Red Robin fame for £2019.

Ever one to keep busy, Cotton was a keen amateur racer who finished fourth at the 1949 British Grand Prix in between his musical engagements, as well as turning out for Brentford Football Club.

Not being a small man, Cotton had a 75bhp Super engine installed into his 356 (therefore making it a 1600cc ‘Super’) to help get his considerable weight from racing’s A to B quicker. Its next owner found that the shocks had been worn down on the passenger side…

That person was Ian Scott Watson, who bought the 356 second-hand (again from AFN) in May 1957 so it could be raced by his friend and racing protégé Jim Clark – then aged 21.

In June the previous year at Aberdeenshire’s Crimond circuit, the young sheep farmer had immediately impressed in Scott Watson’s DKW Sonderklasse, lapping 3sec quicker than its owner.

Upon purchasing the 356, Scott Watson was first entered into the Border Motor Racing Club’s first ever meeting at Charterhall in Berwickshire. At the three races held during that event on October 5, 1957, all behind the wheel of the Porsche, Clark finished third, second and then claimed his first ever race win in the ‘big one’, the BMRC Trophy.

“The Porsche was fabulous in the wet, enabling me to beat the Healey 100S-types which I would not have expected to,” Clark humbly commented later.
With encouragement and help from its original founder Jock McBain, Scott Watson revived the Border Reivers team name as a platform for the prodigious Clark, after it had initially shuttered in 1956. Border reivers (or raiders) were the medieval bandits who plundered and pillaged along the Anglo-Scottish borders.
Clark, Scott Watson, McBain and fellow driver Jimmy Somervail were hoping to channel that marauding spirit through campaigning the 356A and a Jaguar D-type they also bought.

Clark and Scott Watson would usually travel in the Porsche itself, driving from one event to the other as the young prodigy then used the car to rack up club race wins. No special race tyres, rollcage or seatbelts were involved. It was just the 356 as it was.

In May 1958, the Borders ace became the first sports car driver in Britain to lap a circuit at over 100mph, doing so en route to victory in the D-type at Full Sutton, a former RAF airbase in East Yorkshire.

The blazing trail continued a few weeks later, as the future F1 legend then took part in his first international races at the 1958 Spa-Francorchamps Grand Prix. He finished fifth in a support race in the 356 and eighth overall in the main event.

“The young Reiver would race the 356 as his career took off”

Towards the end of 1958 Clark then bought the 356 from Scott Watson, so the latter could afford to buy the former a Lotus Elite to compete in also. The young Reiver would continue to both race and drive the 356 as his international career took off, with Stirling Moss and other famous colleagues of the day often enjoying hair-raising passenger rides.

Such were Clark’s and Borders Reivers’ on-track exploits in the 356 that the marque’s racing boss Huschke von Hanstein invited Scott Watson to the Stuttgart factory. There he presented him with a silver model of a 356 on a banked circuit.

As ‘run-what-you-brung’ entries go, surely Clark’s 356 has the ultimate provenance. After chalking up 80,000 miles in UUL 442, he would sell the car for £500 in November 1960. It’s thought his by-then Lotus boss Colin Chapman wasn’t massively keen on his burgeoning F1 star driving an off-brand motor, and asked him to move it on.

The future grand prix champ first deemed his rapid 356 “a big lethal motor car”, but ultimately described selling the Porsche thus: “I parted with an old friend.” After changing hands a number of times, the car would reappear for sale again in the May 1969 edition of Motor Sport, before ending up in a Birkenhead scrapyard. It was rescued in 1979 by enthusiast Nick Mayman who was looking for 356 spares until he realised what he had found (and bought for £30!), before Tom Pead and his friend Mike Smith took it on with the intention of a restoration to its Clark-era glory.

While Clark was cutting his teeth on the racing scene, Motor Sport’s Denis Jenkinson was forging his own path in his 356 Super – and competing in it too. Criss-crossing Europe at speed to cover the continent’s greatest races, the cars he took on his adventures became stars in their own right too. They were something Jenks couldn’t do without.

In the UK he nipped around in his self-christened ‘Crondall Flyer’ Morris Minor – named after the Hampshire village in which Jenks resided – and on European trips he became synonymous with his Jaguar E-type in the ’60s. Before that though, the much-travelled reporter was indelibly linked with his ice blue Porsche 356. “I find it hard to extract pleasure from other forms of motoring to the same degree,” he wrote of the Stuttgart pocket rocket.

“Jenks bought his 356 in 1955, the year of his Mille Miglia triumph”

Jenks bought his 356 in 1955, the year of his Mille Miglia triumph with Stirling Moss. He requested it in absolute base specification – apart from a sunroof for the transcontinental blasts – but immediately upgraded the 1500cc engine to a ‘Super’ 1600 version (like Clark’s) and altered the front suspension too.

“Jenks did away with the bumpers and added aluminium pieces,” says Pead, who purchased the car in 2015. “He had an aero screen added to it, so you can still see marks in the bonnet from the holes. When it left the factory it had spotlights, and they disappeared too – Jenks put it on a weight-loss programme when he was doing hillclimbs and sprints.

“He actually changed the gear lever and accelerator pedal because he was only 5ft tall – but I had to put those back to the original specification as I’m 6ft!”
Jenks wasn’t afraid to rough-up his 356 at the time, but Pead has made sure that’s all been (largely) smoothed out.

“In period Jenks was hard on the car,” he says. “Pretty much every panel was bashed in. So we found all the original bits that he wrote about. I didn’t want to start losing all the history [so as a result] you can still see some of the marks on it.”

In fact, Jenks lists so many issues with the car in his Porsche 356 book from 1980 – as a result of running it so hard – it’s a wonder it’s still around today.
“After using the car for some 30,000 miles of European touring I began to use it for competition purposes, in club events at sprints and hillclimbs, with the 6-Hour Relay Race and a 500-kilometre rally on the Nürburgring thrown in for good measure,” the writer recalled. “It is difficult to say whether the car was driven harder in competitions than it was on the roads of France, Italy and Sicily. Certainly I reached the limit of its road-holding (i.e. spinning gracefully) in the mountains of Calabria as well as at Silverstone.”

Jenks’s most notorious appearance in the 356 came at that above-mentioned 6-Hour Silverstone Relay in 1958, in which Clark raced also. It was won by the Speedwell team’s Austin A35 – with Graham Hill driving.

“Jenkinson, this year with 1600 Super engine in his Porsche, had hit a drum, done some ploughing and spun at Woodcote in upholding Porsche honour,” commented editor Bill Boddy on the mid-race progress.

Jenks would trade in the 356 for an E-type in 1962, the Porsche changing hands several times before finding its way to Pead. Both cars really have been a labour of love for someone passionate about Clark and Jenks. Smith and Pead acquired the Clark car in November 1999. They were suddenly in a rush to get the restoration underway when invited to run the car for a Clark memorial at the 2000 Goodwood Revival, and managed to complete it in under eight months.

They appealed via Porsche enthusiast clubs and networks for unused (or at least little-used) components which could replace those beyond the pale on Clark’s car. The bodyshell was sent to Sportwagen in Southend, where a painstaking process was undertaken to get it back into shape. The 1.5-litre engine was rehabilitated by specialist Barry Curtis in Watford. The Clark 356 also has its Border Reivers stickers on either side – the sort of touch that shows the passion of its custodian.
Meanwhile the Jenks Porsche went on a similarly chequered journey after the journalist traded it in.

“The guy I bought it off had started trying to restore it,” Pead says. “He was a welder by trade, he made metal gates, and it showed in the work! The car was a mess. It was complete and driveable, but appalling. On the plus side, it had the original engine and gearbox, apart from some rusty bits of bodywork the previous owner had tried to weld on. It took 18 months to restore – it wasn’t a quick way of doing it.

“Apart from the bodywork, I did everything. Every part cleaned, polished, sanded, and I tried not to replace anything I didn’t need to. All the paintwork on the dashboard, the steering wheel, all original.”

The Jenks 356 made its racing return at the 2023 Goodwood Members’ Meeting, an experience Pead describes as “worrying”, but it held together. The Clark Porsche was a key part of a recent Goodwood parade which marked his incredible 1965 racing season.

Catching the sharp light of the sky, there’s an aura about these 356s which sets them apart. Historic racing veteran Robert Barrie, who has competed in the Jenks car at Goodwood on behalf of Pead, articulates just what it is that gives these 356s personality: “There’s something about those cars: it’s the aesthetic, it’s the engineering, even down to the noises they make, the driving position, just the small details too. They are great examples of engineering. It’s just a fabulous shape – it’s unthreatening. You see one on the road, it almost looks like a UFO.

“It’s not the fastest thing on four wheels. But if you did want, as Jenks and Clark did, to criss-cross Europe for miles and miles, that thing stands a very good chance of getting you to where you’re going.”