The Jaguar XK120 is by far the fastest car tested by Road & Track!
We were pleased to publish on our web site www.DMTRG.com in mid-December 2024 the original road test and review of the Jaguar XK120 in Road and Track magazine of May 1951 (link at the end of this article). Note the remark “The Jaguar XK120 is by far the fastest car tested by Road & Track”! The magazine itself is a rarity and the magazine’s archives are missing May 1951. Steve Schuler had lent his set to Rob Manson so we are pleased you are able to read about this iconic motor car. Within a few days in December, the jungle drums of the interweb were beating loudly and widely. Terry Buffum, who for decades has looked after the car, and owner Rob Manson provided us with even more data about the Parkinson Jaguar Special. It is important to record as much of this as possible here, for our successors.
Our original Jaguar XK120 road car
The particular Jaguar XK120 road car (#670191) tested and written up in this magazine is of great importance to us all involved with the Del Monte Trophy Race Group (www.dmtrg.com) because this is the car which became the the Parkinson Jaguar Special. No-one knew the article in Road and Track was about Parkinson’s car until Jim Sitz, photographer for International Motors, Road and Track and Phil Hill’s biography, pointed it out. Don Parkinson raced twice at Pebble Beach in pre-crash Jaguar XK120 Roadster, one of the first of the new Jaguar sports cars to arrive in California. Don Parkinson drove the XK120 to Pebble Beach for the 1950 Concours and raced it in the inaugural Pebble Beach Road Races, finishing second in the Pebble Beach Cup. Only Phil Hill was quicker, and incidentally both drivers were piloting new Jaguar XK120s. In a wintertime match-up at Carrell Speedway, Parkinson got partial revenge by beating Hill soundly. On the second occasion at Pebble Beach, in May 1951 (in the same month as the this article but after its publication!), Don wrapped the XK120 round a tree in Turn 3; the body was so badly damaged it was not used again; Terry Buffum reports that “it was in Dean Batchelor‘s back yard when I bought the car circa 1970″.
The chassis number
Terry Buffum and Del Monte maestro Rob Manson confirms that the Road and Track test car did indeed become the Parkinson Jaguar Special despite some doubt about the chassis number cast by http://www.xkdata.com/gallery/zoom/?id=736311 which appears to several inaccuracies in it. Terry adds “The serial number confusion makes me wonder if “the other” 670191 might be the body from Dean’s yard. I’ve always used the 670191 on entry forms as that is what the California vehicle title shows.” Although Terry never found the numbers 670191 on the chassis, and suspected they were lost in the engine relocation rearward, Rob Manson scraped the chassis and found 670 and the top tip of a 1. That confirms it to be a steel-bodied left-hand-drive car (670). The remaining 2 or 3 numbers would confirm the 670191 that has always been on the California registration and that it is an early 1950 car. None of the Jaguar experts that Rob has spoken to have full confidence in the UK car that claims the same number. The consensus seems to be that the UK car was a “bitsa”, i.e. “bits of”, made up of parts from different cars.
Birth of the Parkinson Jaguar Special
The engine, chassis and running gear of the crashed car became … the 1950 Parkinson Jaguar Special which was built at Roger Barlow’s International Motors in Los Angeles in 1951, by Joe Thrall, Parkinson and Phil Hill (Parkinson’s brother-in-law). The new aluminum body was sketched by teenager Robert Cumberford (who later became a General Motors designer and styling critic), and constructed by Marvin Faw under the supervision of Phil Hill, Parkinson’s brother-in-law. The original Jaguar’s chassis, running gear, and engine were re-used with little modification, although the Special weighed several hundred pounds less than the roadster. The engine was moved rearward about 12 inches, down about 4 inches and slightly to the right. Richie Ginther modified the XK engine in 1951 and displacement was increased from 3.4 to 3.8-liters making it one of the first big displacement Jaguars. The car now weighs about 2000 pounds; Terry writes “Although I stated at some point that the Special was about 1000 pounds lighter than original XK120, if the Road & Track article’s statement of the weight is correct, it is closer to 500 pounds lighter. I believe it was an SVRA race at Sears Point where they had scales which showed the car, wet, at 2100+ pounds”.
Racing history
Parkinson raced his Special at all of the major West Coast road races in 1951 and 1952 with excellent results, including a win at Palm Springs and a return to Pebble Beach for a third time. Parkinson then switched his racing to a Jaguar C-Type. It was raced by others, principally Chuck Daigh, to continued success through 1955. It took a cameo role in the movie Johnny Dark, dark blue with the race #81 (see https://www.imcdb.org/v919736.html). The Parkinson Jaguar competed at the Pebble Beach Road Races in 1950, 1951, 1952, 1954 and 1955.
Terry Buffum’s Stewardship
Terry bought the Parkinson Special in 1970, and it sat while he had other projects. A Cadillac engine was still installed when Terry bought the car. In the mid-1970s Terry hired Marvin Faw to restore the car but Faw’s failing health prevented completion. John Buddenbaum took over the project and completed the restoration in about 1982. Among other things, the restoration required fabricating a new bonnet (top section), creating new motor mounts, and building up a set of custom exhaust headers. Keeping the car period correct was a very high priority. For example, although disc brakes would provide a huge performance improvement, they’d be conspicuously “incorrect” for the car. Terry and John enjoy campaigning the car together. They’ve vintage raced it quite actively since 1983. John has driven the Parkinson Special in almost all its races since restoration, but Rob Manson has raced it a couple of times and Terry regularly drove the car to and from races into the 1990s. The Parkinson Special has proven an uncommonly reliable race car, with only three DNFs in the last fifty-plus years whilst chalking up many victories and countless podium finishes in its class.
Racing with John Buddenbaum
John had a shop in San Carlos, California, for forty years where he worked on vintage racecars and automotive fabrication work. In 2023 he moved his shop to the Monterey area. One of his hobbies is building very customized motorcycles. John and partner Eric Noyes hold three world records on streamlined motorcycles at Bonneville and he has driven their 50cc motorcycle at 145mph! Noyes has piloted the same bike with larger displacement engines to 100cc and 125cc records. The Parkinson Jaguar Special driven by John Buddenbaum has been a regular participant at the Rolex Monterey Historic Reunion since 1983 and the more recent Velocity Invitational where it finished 2nd in the hands of John in the Del Monte Trophy Race Group feature race at Sonoma Raceway, California, USA, on October 6th, 2024. 2009 F1 World Champion Jenson Button won that race in his ex-Fangio Jaguar C-Type.
See the road test of the pre-crash Jaguary XK120 belonging to Don Parkinson at https://dmtrg.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Road-and-Track-road-test-Don-Parkinson.jpg
All about Jim Sitz… https://velocetoday.com/jim-sitz-remembers-phil-hill-2/
Many race images at https://www.conceptcarz.com/gallery/15019/jaguar-parkinson-special.aspx
Read the article in Jaguar XK Magazine, spring 2025
Road & Track magazine? A snippet for the cognoscenti who think that I spelt Road and Track magazine wrong in the first two paragraphs above. The ampersand (&) in the title was not introduced until 1955. The editor Terry Galanoy replaced the word “and” in the magazine’s name because the words Road and Track were “graphically too long for newsstand-effective recognition”.
Some details on the images above…
Pebble Beach 1951 – Parkinson’s Jaguar XK120 crumpled
Carroll Speedway 1951- Basil Panzer, Allard J2 Flathead, Phil Hill XK120 #2, Don Parkinson XK120 #8
Chuck Daigh in the #55 Parkinson Jaguar Special, Ken Miles in his MG R1 Special
1952
This article updated by Marcus Bicknell under the guidance of
Terry Buffum, John Buddenbaum and Rob Manson at Christmas 2024.