The beast with six appeal

Author: Kevin Norbury

Date: 19/02/2004

Publication: The Age

Section: Drive

Page: 16

It has cost some $50,000 in repairs, but Ken Hare-Brown still loves his Jensen Interceptor, writes Kevin Norbury.

IF ANYONE had experienced the same problems Ken Hare-Brown has had with his Jensen Interceptor, they'd as likely as not have pushed it off the nearest cliff. But not Hare-Brown.

"My wife was going to push it over the nearest cliff" he says, with a laugh. ``She used to kneel and pray almost every night that someone would steal it."

But, says Hare-Brown, doing his best to appear indignant: "It's my everyday driver. It's driving in the grand manner."

What's more, it's an SP. That stands for Six-Pack, words to the Aussie bloke that mean something else entirely, but to the owners of these British thoroughbreds refers to six chokes in three dual-throat carburettors that, if you believe Hare-Brown, gave his Interceptor's 7.2-litre V8 near moon-launch capabilities. Sadly, they're all gone now.

"I had to take them off. I couldn't keep up with fixing them", he admits candidly. "You had to have a degree in fixing carburettors to keep them in tune, otherwise it used a shit-load of fuel."

The six-pack set-up was unpredictable as well. "They (the carburettors) were dangerous, quite frankly. Bang! They'd come on unexpectedly. It was like putting your foot down hard on the accelerator."

On top of the big V8 now, the words Jensen etched on each bank, is a four-barrel Carter, but a quick spin around the streets of Hawthorn in this eye-catching two-plus-two sports coupe proved the car still has plenty of brute power.

Hare-Brown has had the motor done up, of course, rebuilt, rebored, retweaked, you name it, so that it now puts out 410 hp (305 kW).

He lifts the bonnet to show it off – "that's a whopping great donk" – then lifts the large glass bubble hatchback window to reveal the boot. "It will take two sets of golf clubs and two weekend cases, sir", he says, in his best British-bred cockney sales pitch.

You start to understand Hare-Brown's fascination with the beast after he tells you how he saw one at London's Earls Court motor show in 1966, and the same year the sales director where he worked bought a Jensen Interceptor Mk1 as his company car.

"We all drooled over that. It was a cathartic experience seeing that big window and those great big exhausts", he says. It was "a horrible brown colour", but that clearly didn't put him off, not after he went with the sales director in his Jensen ``up to Kidderminster via the M1 to Birmingham".

He tells how the sales director, obviously out to impress his sales junior, "planted his foot" and read aloud each landmark speed until the car reached 125 mph (200 km/h). "For someone used to going around in his father's Ford Anglia it was quite an experience", he says. "I was smitten."

Hare-Brown came to Australia the following year, landing a job that included a company car. But he never forgot that Jensen. He used to comb the used-car columns of The Age out of curiosity and in 1988 spotted this 1972 Interceptor SP at a Camberwell yard. It wasn't exactly pristine, but somehow he thought being a Jensen it would last forever.

"I obviously thought I could get in that and drive off into the sunset."

That wasn't exactly how things turned out. "Within a year I had the engine and brakes rebuilt and everything else followed", he says, estimating that in the 15 years he's owned it, he has spent "at least $50,000" on the car.

"It's had a bare metal restoration. Everything's been replaced in this bloody car. It's made my wife cry."

He even sent to England for a new louvred bonnet because the one on it was badly rusted. As well he's had the black leather upholstery "refurbished", but the beige scalloped roof lining is original as are the dashboard instruments, angled towards the driver. "It's like a little aircraft cockpit, isn't it?"

He's also had the car repainted. He didn't like the "terrible gold colour" it was so now it's what he calls champagne.

He has all the original paperwork; he even contacted the car's first owner in England to discover it was shipped to Australia by a NSW dentist in 1978. Hare-Brown is the third owner.

However, the money he has spent on the car seems but a distant memory when he climbs into that "cockpit" in front of a speedo topping out at 160 mph (257 km/h). "I've had it up to 141 (227 km/h) on the back roads of Queensland while my good wife was asleep. She never knew", he says, laughing. "It's a very quick car."

Suddenly Hare-Brown gets this genial look on his face and presses the centre of the leather-clad steering wheel, sounding the horn. "Now look at this", he says, pressing it again, this time flicking a big piano-key switch on the console. The sound of dual air-horns sends birds scattering in all directions. "We've only just discovered them", he says with a grin". They were never connected up."

It's almost as if his latest discovery has made the $50,000-odd he's spent on this car worthwhile.

"It's like having a mistress", he says, again laughing. "In fact, my wife once told a friend she'd wished I'd had a mistress. It would have been cheaper."

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