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Jowett Jupiter sports cars owned by famous people

who are famous for other reasons than Jowett Jupiter ownership

Red Skelton

The death in 1997 of USA Radio and TV entertainer  Red Skelton (right) was a reminder  that some famous people who were at one time or another Jupiter owners.   Even though only 900 Jupiters were built, more than a handful were owned by men known to a wider circle than just their family and work colleagues. All these men are famous for reasons other than having been Jupiter owners.   The three most famous ex-owners must be John Surtees, Peter Ustinov, and Red Skelton plus friends. There are several others including Peter Craven the speedway ace, John Willment (who with John Wyer was one of the two JW's of JW Automotive) and Don Cockell the Light-heavyweight boxing champion - see below.

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John Surtees

It was Mike Hawthorne who talked motor-cyclist  John Surtees in to switching to car racing with the unanswerable argument "Why don't you try cars? They stand up easier!".

It is not just that he is the only person to have been world champion on two wheels as well as four - the seven motorcycle world championships of John Surtees occurred at a time when motorcycling was far more popular - and our heroes who raced them were so much better known - than today. In nineteen-fifties Britain there were one million motorcyclists and only four million cars. Most of the latter were driven by ex two-wheelers. Bob Foster (who rallied a Javelin), Geoff Duke, John Surtees, Mike Hailwood, Phil Read, Barry Sheene - they were household names for us all, much more so than the racing car drivers. And the camaraderie! If you broke down (as sometimes happened - they were British bikes we rode after all) the next bike would always stop. Read on to find out about another famous motorcyclist who owned a Jupiter around the same time.

Born into a motorcycling background - his father was an amateur racer - Surtees began racing on two wheels in 1951. From 1956-1960 John Surtees was the outstanding rider of the day, taking his seven World Championship titles on 350cc and 500cc machines. In 1960 he raced a Ken Tyrrell Cooper car at Goodwood - and won. John made his Grand Prix debut in 1960 for Team Lotus, and in 1964 he won the Formula 1 World Championship driving for Ferrari. In total John Surtees drove in 111 Grands Prix, scoring a total of six wins, eight pole positions and eleven fastest laps.

John Surtees in motor-cycle leathers, taken around the time he was a Jupiter owner.  He remembered the car with great affection. A saloon-bodied Jupiter entered  his collection for a while - see below.

 The first car of John Surtees (after taking his driving test in his mother's Morris Minor which ran out of petrol during the test) came about as follows "When I was travelling backwards and forwards to Stevenage [serving his apprenticeship at Vincent-HRD] one particularly foul day I stopped at a garage in Hatfield and saw this lovely gold Jupiter in a showroom and couldn’t resist it. My father arranged the Hire Purchase deal. It was a super little car...I didn’t modify the Jupiter in anyway because I was too busy, working a full day at Stevenage and having to get home to prepare my bikes in the evenings. But it gave me excellent service, and was under-rated by many people. My memories are of superb performance and roadholding, which gave me trouble-free running". He replaced it with a Porsche 356 which John recalled, was the first car that he 'lost' on a bend.

Other Jupiter-owning notables include W Tee, proprietor of the respected British magazine Motor Sport, who owned first a Mk1 and later a Mk1a. These cars were occasionally mentioned in the magazine by the editor Bill Boddy, a regular and appreciative driver of the Jupiters, in the early fifties. The Scottish accordionist-band-leader,  Sir Jimmy Shand, a household name in the 1950s and 1960s (who died 23 December 2000 aged 92) owned a Jupiter (which still exists) in the mid-to-late fifties during the height of his fame, and the late Queen's cousin Gerald Lascelles owned, raced, and honeymooned in a special-bodied Jupiter which also still exists and which is under restoration as you read this. Lascelles, besides having been the grandson of King George V on his mother's side and therefore close to  England, also wrote for the English magazine Jazz Journal, and was from 1964 to 1971 the president of the BRDC (British Racing Drivers' Club); as such he oversaw the expansion of Silverstone from just one of several British circuits to become the leading track and home of the British Grand Prix. Finally the explorer-cum exploration travel-agent and author Colonel John Blashford-Snell owned a standard green Jupiter he called the Green Goddess - see his book "Where the Trowell Ends". All these Jupiters even the Green Goddess survive.

Remember JW Automotive? It was formed by John Willment and John Wyer to take over the premises and activities of Ford Advanced Vehicles, Slough, England in 1967, where they also produced the last Shelby Cobra (the Lone Star). John Wyer had been the competitions manager at Aston Martin for many years, while John Willment ran a racing car development shop called Willment Racing, being heavily involved with preparing Brabhams in the mid 60s, as well as GT40s. The two JWs combined and gave the GT40 Mk IV another two outright wins at Le Mans, in 1968 and 1969, before switching to the Gulf Porsche. John Willment was the first owner-driver of Edmund Nankivell's saloon-bodied Jupiter, built in the Italian style, see below:

The very first owner of the Willment Jupiter, but not its first driver, was Philip Fotheringham-Parker. It was built for him to drive it in the 1953 Monte Carlo Rally, but it was not finished in time. Phillip was a well-known motor-sportsman of the nineteen-thirties, forties, and fifties. He once drove a works Alvis Silver Eagle over the banking at Brooklands, and survived!

Boxer Don Cockell owned a Jupiter in 1952, although which one, and for how long, is not known to us. A blacksmith by trade, Don Cockell began boxing in 1946. He was invincible in the Light-heavyweight category and became the British and Commonwealth champion at that weight. he then began challenging heavyweights being successful in Europe but not in the US where his brave 1955 fight against Rocky Marciano was stopped in the 9th. He had 81 fights in his career, winning 66 of them

 General Sir Mike Jackson GCB CBE DSO ADC owned Jupiter OPX 495 when he was stationed in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, having bought it on 29/8/1969 when he was aged aged 24. In Kosovo he apparently earned the nickname Macho Jacko and is credited with disobeying an order from Supreme NATO Commander Gen Wesley Clark, saying   I wont start World War III for you !  - but that is another story. He rose to be the very top man in the British Army before retiring in August 2006. Our man crashed his Jupiter in 1973 and it was an insurance write-off, but it was rescued from the TT Garage, Farnham, to pass through the hands of several restorers. These days it is a very smart running Jupiter in its peacock blue livery.

 Colin Chapman - he of Lotus cars fame - is reliably reported to have owned a Jupiter in his bachelor days, so would have been during the early 1950s. A woman said that when she was young, she was asked by the mother of her best friend to chaperone her best friend by sitting between the said friend and Colin Chapman in Colin's Jupiter. Anyone know more?

Motor-cycling Speedway-man Peter Craven owned a Jupiter in the mid nineteen fifties. It still exists in good order. a very tidy running car. A bit of a show-off some said; he used to drive the Jupiter to meetings with his motor-bike attached to the back of the Jupiter! He rode for the Manchester club Belle Vue: twice world speedway champion (1955 and 1962) and as a natural-born speedway ace, Peter Craven, after three brilliant wins at Meadowbank in 1963, crashed heavily in the fourth race trying to avoid a fallen rider and was tragically killed at the height of his powers. Peter Craven is still remembered by speedway fans. An example from 'A4lawnlady' recalling Peter's first ride as little lad at Belle Vue Stadium. "I can remember him holding on to the bike for grim death. He was  so tiny  his feet  didn't  reach  the  ground and  it  was  feat  of  balance. My Dad always claimed that Peter told him he rode around until he ran out of fuel, because he had not worked out how to stop the bike without falling off."

The Craven Shield is a Speedway Cup competition governed by the Speedway Control Board and British Speedway Promoters’ Association. Founded in 1997, it is of course named in memory of Peter Craven.

 Ernest Dudley pen-name of Vivian Ernest Coltman-Allen the prolific writer of detective novels, once well-known as the 'Armchair detective'. He was an occasional film maker and briefly an associate of Fred Astaire. He was the first owner of a special bodied Jupiter. Although born in 1908, Ernest Dudley was still active almost to his death in 2006 appearing at book fairs and the like; his books are being reprinted by the Wildside Press. A photo of the ex-Ernest Dudley car, which is still around and often appears at meetings, see below:

Budge Rogers OBE - Bedford and England Rugby Football player (world record holder of 34 England Rugby Caps), owned and drove his Jupiter HKY 770 from 1960 to 1964. Born 20 June 1939 in Bedford, his club Bedford recovered after the Second World War and continued to play all the leading clubs and had a great spell in the mid ninteen-sixties. There were three Bedford players regularly in the England team with David Perry and Budge Rogers captaining their county. In 1969-70 season Bedford won the Sunday Telegraph English-Welsh Rugby Table. Probably, the Blues finest hour was in 1975 when Bedford, captained by Budge Rogers beat Rosslyn Park in the final of the Knock Out Cup (now Tetley Bitter Cup) at Twickenham 28-12. There was a gate of nearly 18,000 which at the time was a record attendance.

Budge Rogers later played for the Barbarians. He managed the England under 23s to Canada in 1977. The Ugby Football Union (RFU) organised an England tour to the Far East and England, 
led by Budge Rogers, played two tests in Japan and two tests in Colombo. In the mid 1980s he was chairman of the England selectors. In 2000 he was managing the England team. 
In 2001 he was the RFU President and then on the board of Trustees of the Lord's Taverners.  D P (Budge) Rogers, OBE is the holder of the England record of 34 caps, 
British Lion and Barbarian many times over, captain of England on several occasions and the first English player to be honoured by the Queen for his services to football. 

The ex-Budge Rogers Jupiter HKY 770 has been thoroughly and sensitively restored, as the above photo attests !

Joe Kelly has some considerable fame as a more than competent Irish Grand Prix racing-car driver.

Joe Kelly also was the secondowner of a Jupiter which still exists restored and running. 

He is known to have raced this Jupiter at Goodwood, Boreham, and Isle of Man plus events in Ireland:- a race at Curragh and hillclimb at Wicklow

Here below he is racing his Alta in the 1950 British Grand Prix at Silverstone (the very first World Championship F1 race); he is following Geoffrey Crossley also in an Alta.

...and here below is Joe Kelly racing his Jupiter at Boreham in June 1952 - photo taken by Guy Griffiths:

Peter Owen-Smith writes from South Africa: "I was reading your section on famous Jupiter owners.  South African cricket captain of the 1960s era, Peter van der Merwe, owned a red Jupiter when he was still playing in Groot Drakenstein (near Stellenbosch in the Cape).  

This was long before he even played provincial cricket, never mind internationals. I thought you might be interested". 

Robbie Mackenzie-Low, sometime racing driver, owned and competed in a Jupiter four times, before moving on to Cooper and then Elva. It is HKW 429, and Robbie raced twice at Goodwood and drove it in two club rallies. The Robbie Mackenzie-Low Jupiter still exists. It - from 2018 - fully restored and running in Yorkshire. 

Philip Marlowe

 The fictional detective Philip Marlowe in the Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye commented:-

We went to Victors. He drove me in a rust colored Jupiter-Jowett with a flimsy canvas rain top under which there was only just room for the two of us. It had pale leather upholstery and what looked like silver fittings. I'm not too fussy about cars, but the damn thing did make my mouth water a little. He said it would do sixty-five in second. It had a squatty little gear shift that barely came up to his knees.           Thanks to Bruce H. Smith for sending this to me.

It could be that Raymond Chandler had read of the Jupiter R4 and was trying to explain to Jowett what WOULD sell un the US market...

In late October 2000 Paul Fessenden sent this message about Ross Thomas:-

"I read a book that mentioned a Jowett-Jupiter and searched the web to satisfy my curiosity. The book was a novel called "Voodoo, Ltd." by Ross Thomas (quite likely). Paul wrote that he had searched through a half dozen books on airplanes so may have the wrong book but he is about 90% certain. 

It was a quick mention. Someone was waiting for an appointment to arrive and was musing that they would probably show up in a stretch limo, a Mercedes 500, or maybe a Jowett-Jupiter. This was to give the impression that this person for whom they were waiting was wealthy and showy". 

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