An expensive motor car with a set of jumper leads connected to it makes quite an unusual sight.
An expensive motor car with a set of jumper leads connected to it makes quite an unusual sight.
But, with its battery flat, there was little choice if the roar of the Jensen Interceptor’s 383 cubic inch V8 engine (6.7 litre) was to be unleashed outside Clive Langley’s XLT Industrial Training business in Bibra Lake.
The snarl of Mr Langley’s Aston Martin DB7 Vantage had only minutes earlier set the tone for what was to come.
Now, he was keen to juxtapose the throatier grunt of his Jensen.
“You have just got to hear it,” Mr Langley said. “The Aston is a gentleman’s car but this [Jensen] has a menacing sound.”
And, yes, the Jensen certainly roars. The midnight blue version Mr Langley owns is a 1970 model of the hand-built British racing car, a breed of racing machine that has captivated the former welder since he was 15.
“I played soccer with a real estate agent who had one,” Mr Langley said. “He said if his car had wings it would fly, and I wanted one.”
But, having left school at 14, being able to afford a Jensen seemed somewhat out of reach.
“Back then a Rolls Royce was £5,500, the Jensen was £5,200 and a family car was £500,” he told Business Class.
Now, more than two decades later, Mr Langley has built a fortune after developing an underwater welding system and floating Neptune Marine Services on the Australian Securities Exchange.
It has been a career that has allowed him to indulge in his passion for automobiles.
He bought his Jensen Interceptor for $17,000 eight years ago, aged 42, and has since spent about $70,000 turning it into the car he had always wanted.
It has been followed up with some Jaguar purchases and his pride and joy, the Aston Martin.
There were about 6,400 Jensen Interceptors ever made, and Mr Langley reckons there are six of them in WA.
Mr Langley bought his Jensen after a car enthusiast mate spotted an advert for a sale in Brisbane.
At the time Mr Langley thought he was buying a restored car, but it turned out the black and white picture in the advertisement only told part of the story.
“When it arrived it wasn’t all together, the windows were sitting on the back seat,” Mr Langley remembers.
“So I spent a bit of money getting it up to the right condition.”
The Jensen Interceptor has a Royal Doulton windscreen plus some modern elements that were rare at the time of its production – air-conditioning and some electronics.
“If there was a real enthusiast who wanted to buy a car as good as you could get, this would be it,” Mr Langley said.
“But I don’t think I would ever sell it.”
Mr Langley has always been a car man.
He’s owned three Jaguars but his most recent Jag, the XKR, has well and truly dropped down the pecking order after Mr Langley noticed a black DB7 Vantage Aston Martin when collecting his Jag from a routine service about 12 months ago.
“I was picking up the Jag and there was this beautiful (DB7) Aston Martin there,” Mr Langley said. “They told me that a guy had just bought a new DB9 Aston and was putting the DB7 in storage and I thought ‘no way, I have to buy it’.
“I love the Jaguar but when you step out of the cream interior into the Aston with its dark suede lining and black leather seats…it is something else.”
The Aston Martin, which like the Jensen is hand built, has become Mr Langley’s day car.
“It is the first model that came out after Ford took it over and spent a lot of money on it,” Mr Langley said.
It has a top speed of about 270 kilometres an hour and can go from 0 to 100km/h in about five seconds.
It is slick and black with a six-litre V12 engine and starts with the press of a big red button.
Driving the James Bond-mobile to work every day does turn heads, Mr Langley told Business Class.
“People stop and take pictures of it,” he said, which is something else close to his heart, because Mr Langley says he has enough cars and is now investing in photography equipment to provide an outlet for another of his passions.
