5 replies to this topic

[Philip Whiteman]

Prompted by the Easter Monday 1956 photograph of a wrecked D Type Jaguar at Goodwood in a book presented to me on Good Friday by a friend, I've done a bit of book, and web research: as some of you will know, the car was XKD 510 and the driver was Tony Dennis. Described a protege of Duncan Hamilton – who then owned the car – Dennis appears to have inadvertently selected first gear at speed, when he was being lapped by the leading cars. The D Type went end-over-end and caught fire, Dennis being thrown out and killed. From the photo in the book ('Motor Racing: The Golden Age') it looks like the accident happened towards the end of the Lavant Straight.

Other than the fact that Tony Dennis was 'inexperienced' and started from the back of the grid, there very little more information about this unfortunate driver to be gleaned from either Duncan Hamilton's 'Touch Wood!' or Andrew Whyte's 'Jaguar Sports Racing & Works Competition Cars From 1954'. Hamilton survived a series of hair-raising road, and racing accidents; his friend borrowed one of his cars, made a mistake and died – and all we seem to have to remember him by is a few short paragraphs.

Can anybody here flesh out the details of Tony Dennis' life an give a bit more of an idea of who, and what kind of chap he was?

[David McKinney]

He'd been quite successful with an Austin-Healey in 1955 British club races

[Vitesse2]

His full name was Anthony Fredrick Forbes Dennis and he was described in his death notice in The Times as the younger son of Lt-Col and Mrs James Dennis of Coles Hill House, Buntingford, Hertfordshire. He was 26 at the time of his death.

[cooper997]

IIRC, this D Type was rebuilt and was being raced at a Johore GP in the early 1960's. Where its driver was involved in another fatal accident with the car. The remains eventually found their way to Australia. To be rebuilt when owned by Ian Cummins, with this and the Keith Berryman owned ex Anderson/Pitt D Type being restored side by side.

During the 1990's the Cummins car passed to Bib Stillwell and was raced in Historics by him.

I'm sure Les Hughes at Australian Jaguar magazine would be able to fill in all the details.

Stephen

[David McKinney]

Yes and no...
Gerry Ashmore bought the Dennis wreckage, and the damaged tub was used many years later to assist in the re-construction of another D-type. Ashmore meanwhile rebuilt the original car with a new tub, and it was this that Yong Nam Kee crashed at Johore in 1963.

The engine and other bits went into a local special built by Tan Ah Bee, while the tub remained unused. The Johore D-type bits were all reunited by John Hallihan in Australia in 1967, passed seven years later to Ian Cummins, who completed the restoration in 1981. Stillwell was running it in 1982 in the US, where it was subsequently owned by Bob Baker, before returning to Cummins in 1998

[Eric Dunsdon]

The crash occured at the end of Lavant Straight approaching Woodcote Corner and must have been a frightening thing to see. Bauble and I saw the flames from our vantage point over at St Mary's. That was a sad Easter Monday at Goodwood for the popular A.P.O. (Bert) Rodgers also lost his life when his Tojeiro-Bristol crashed at Lavant Corner. Fortunately, Mike Hawthorn was luckier, and escaped with minor injuries when his BRM left the road at Fordwater.