THE JENSEN INTERCEPTOR Born 1966 Died 1976: It was a British concept, but the styling and initial build was completely Italian. And the Jensen Interceptor was an immediate wow with those who hankered after a GT that could fly the British flag and still have the lines and performance of an Italian stallion.
The nameplate wasn't new - the Jensen brothers in West Bromwich had been building a car by that name since 1950, but this one was the first to have a metal body. The chassis was from the 1962 C-V8 Jensen which was powered by a Chrysler V8. The style came initially from Carozzeria Touring but was finished by Vignale, who built the first batch of bodies and later shipped the tooling to West Bromwich.
The Interceptor was a luxury car in no uncertain terms, the occupants being cocooned in a leather and walnut ambience.
It had a number of other innovations, including being one of the first production cars to feature anti-lock brakes. Soon after the introduction of the model, the FF version was also to be the first production car with four-wheel-drive. No production car in Europe subsequently had anything nearly as sophisticated until Audi produced its quattro system 25 years ago.
In essence there were three Interceptor iterations, the 1966-1969 car, 1970-1971, and the III one until its end. One thousand and twenty-four units of the first were built, many of them with individual interiors tailored to customer specifications. Early versions gained some notoriety for poor build and unreliability, but by late 1967 things had much improved. Among the options offered was power steering.
The Interceptor II developed in 1969, capitalised on better build methods as well as enhanced performance. Power steering was now standard, and air-conditioning an option.
There was a padded dashboard with new switchgear, devised mainly for the American market and its emerging safety regulation. Almost half of the 1,128 units of the II series produced went for export, with eight of these sold in Ireland.
In addition to the liftback original, a coupé version was also produced, but by all accounts it wasn't as well appreciated.
The Interceptor was also produced with more powerful engines than the 360 original. These were the 440, and the even punchier 440 SP which is today very rare.The car got good TV exposure, being the car of choice of Simon Templar in the Return of the Saint series.
The Jensen company was sold in 1968 to a firm of merchant bankers, in order to raise funding for increased production. In 1970 it was sold on. The iconic car died with the closure of the factory in 1976.