1936 | Jaguar SS 1

Open to everything

We have our principles when it comes to cars. One of them, at least until about two years ago, was "no pre-war cars". Why? Because we could only develop moderate enthusiasm for them. Because? we simply had no points of contact for these bulging, baroque machines and we also had one or two prejudices in the back of our minds. No performance. A cramp to drive. Nobody knows anything about them, not even us. And above all, no power, again. Well, that's how it is, we've opened our doors to everything, but that doesn't mean we're always open to everything right from the start. But, for a lot. And we learn every day. And we had to (and wanted to) learn a lot, even in the pre-war area, not everything is crap that doesn't have at least five litres of engine capacity and, above all, the steering wheel on the wrong side. And so we are open to everything, as long as it brings a certain degree of fascination and, above all, an equally certain degree of (driving) quality. BAM! A 36 Jaguar SS Tourer. What? Is it still possible?

Plenty of room over your head

Of course, a convertible or a roadster has its own fascination compared to a sedan or a coupé. A man or woman has to be a hard-ass to bring an open-top vehicle into their home. Because the extra fun of infinite headroom is only available in fine weather. And this is especially true if you get a folding roof with the car, but otherwise only poorly fitting windows that reliably keep neither rain nor snow out of the interior. So you really have to be a real taker, because there's no air conditioning, no heating and, above all, no protection from the tides. But maybe that's exactly the plus of the experience, a plus of the proximity to the unpredictable nature, which shows us little humans time and again that we are only a quiet fart on this planet. Either we defy the weather or we die. Well, rain hasn't killed anyone yet, unless it's accompanied by a wall of a house coming from the left at 300 km/h, then it's going to be troublesome.

Back to the past

The year is 1936 in Coventry, Great Britain. The weather, like the politics, was rather unstable at that time, but still people knew nothing, open roadsters or four-seaters were the big thing at SS. And speaking of big numbers, 36 of this particular example were built like this in 1936. Ha, a small number after all. Nevertheless, the Tourers found buyers all over the world, even if only in small numbers. And so did this black knight, which still stands there today and, above all, pulls away as if it were a matter of life and death.

In contrast to the SS100, which was designed as a pure sports car, the Tourer was rather something for the family or a trip with friends. The Tourer is not so uncompromisingly sporty in its tuning, neither in its power delivery nor in the acceleration-driven nature of its driving dynamics. The Tourer was supposed to be a luxury cruiser And, today, especially in direct comparison (which we can offer in real time), this is absolutely confirmed. The Tourer is finer, the machine is smoother, the chassis and steering behaviour is more relaxed. Noticeable! And with that, SS had actually managed to create something like a diversion between the family car and the sporty roadster, something that is now considered more of a blur in today's car world, you can configure the family estate to such an extent that it outstrips the sibling convertible in sporty terms in smart trainers. Ciao.

Back to 1936, when motorways were still a thing of the past, the car in the lower middle class had at best double-digit horsepower and was still closer to a horse-drawn carriage than a car. And then SS comes along and blasts out a four-seater convertible with over 100 hp. Who's going to buy one of those in the midst of an emerging war and the aftermath of an economic crisis? Well, 36 people. They bought such an SS1 Tourer, in this particular case the car was delivered in London and found its way to the USA after the war, where it was eventually pulled out of a barn and completely restored. There are simply cars that have elegantly managed the detour around the scrap press and thus still reliably enrich the street scene today. And although I deliberately went to a quiet place to take the pictures, where there was not so much public traffic, I was asked about the Tourer about ten times and got involved in a conversation. Including the fact that I was allowed to take pictures of two ladies in front of the tourer twice with someone else's mobile phone. "Can you rent it for a wedding? My daughter is getting married in December!

Unfortunately, there is not enough space here for our complete description of the car, but thank you for reading the 13,000 characters so far. You can find the complete description of the Tourer on our website at www.gasolinekitchen.com, and of course there are also a few more pictures. If you wish, we will be happy to send you more data, and of course you can also take a look at the extensive documentation on the car when you visit it.