When former Jaguar design boss Ian Callum sends you an email suggesting you check out a customized 1950s Jaguar, you make sure you do. Callum, now running his own design shop where he’s putting the finishing touches on a re-imagined version of the Aston Martin Vanquish he designed 20 years ago, is a man of impeccable taste when it comes to both gorgeous road cars and cool customs. And this 1953 Jaguar XK120 Fixed Head Coupe reworked by Australian customizer Justin Hills ticks both boxes. It’s gorgeous and cool.
Hills, owner of Hills & Co Customs in Taree, New South Wales, knows how to build a stunning custom. His 1960 Dodge Phoenix Atom was judged World’s Most Beautiful Custom at the 2013 Sacramento Autorama. The car was later sold to a collector in Texas. The XK120 follows a similar theme. It’s clean and low-slung, with subtle yet fiendishly complex sheet metal changes that retain the essential character of the original design while adding a dramatic elegance.
The first cut is the deepest. Justin initially chopped about two inches from the roof to lower it and then kept cutting bit by bit until he liked the way it looked. As the windshield posts were aligned to the new height, this effectively moved the roof forward by about 3.5 inches. “This gave me two options,” Justin says. “I could cut across the center of the roof from one side to the other and fill the gap, or let the roof go forward and make a longer panel between trunk lid and roof. That was the easy option, but I knew I had to take the hard one, as it would keep the car visually balanced and not looking like it has all moved forward.”
The front fenders have been cut and rolled to get more of the coach-built Bugatti look Hills was after, and the rear fenders are welded to the body, the seams lead filled for a smooth, clean look. New fender skirts were also fabricated to suit the more streamlined look and to cover the rear wheels. Fender skirts, an iconic XK120 design element, were originally only available on cars with steel wheels, as there was insufficient clearance between the skirt and the knockoff hubs on cars with the optional wire wheels.
Inside, the car features original style Connolly leather and 100 percent wool carpet as used in original XK120s. The high-quality trim work was done by Trik Trim in Forster, New South Wales.
It’s a Jaguar under the hood, but not quite the way Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons would remember it. Instead of the legendary XK straight six, Hills’ car is powered by a hand-built, hot-rodded Jaguar V-12. The engine has been slightly de-stroked and fitted with custom-made pistons and rods. A small diameter flywheel from British pre-84 Jaguar performance specialist Rob Beere Racing, with offset starter and a 7.25-inch twin plate Tilton clutch, has helped reduce the rotating masses weight by about 50 percent. The fuel injection system and linkages were custom made by Hills and his team.
“It now revs with ease to 8200 rpm,” Hills says of the modded V12, which is as beautifully finished and gorgeous to look at as the exterior, “and is punching out 460 hp.”
The engine drives through a Toyota Supra R154 five-speed manual transmission, upgraded with heavy duty thrust washers and then back to a limited slip differential in a Jaguar XK150 housing. Air shocks in the front and rear allow the car to be dropped right to the ground, and brakes are disc all round.
Justin’s XK120 FHC won the David Brabham award at the inaugural Sydney Harbour Concours d’Elegance in March last year, and it has since appeared at The Quail during Monterey Car Week and at the Salon Prive Concours d’Elegance at Blenheim Palace in the UK. And late last year, it was on display inside the new Jaguar design studio in Gaydon. Ian Callum’s successor at Jaguar, Julian Thompson, is a fan of the car, too.
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Source: WORLD NEWS
