Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine issue 115 | Page 79

tions for the race-winning D-type.
Wherever Jaguar was during the
year, Norman was present too, chatting with fans and friends, wearing
his distinctive bootlace tie and cowboy boots. At the 2014 Goodwood
Revival, Dewis drove one of the
D-types, his speed illustrating that
he hadn’t lost his touch behind the
wheel.
Of all the cars he worked on,
Dewis considers the D-type to be the
best. “I got that car up to 192 mph on
the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans,” he
says. “Well, I had to pass [Karl] Kling in
the Mercedes.” Jaguar’s star driver at
the time, Mike Hawthorn, had such
faith in Dewis that when he was

asked to attend a test session and
saw that Dewis was already there,
asked the team manager: “Why am I
here? If Norman’s satisfied with it, I’m
satisfied.”
Dewis is working with Jaguar
Land Rover Special Operations’ newly
established Jaguar Heritage Business
organisation to help showcase its capabilities and vision. He is supporting the opening of the new Heritage
workshop at Browns Lane, the extensive classic Jaguar parts offering, the
launch of the new Jaguar Heritage
Driving Experience in Warwickshire,
and the brand-new Lightweight Etype, which he helped develop originally in the early 1960s.

John Edwards, Managing Director, Jaguar Land Rover Special Operations, and Chairman of the Jaguar
Daimler Heritage Trust, said: “Jaguar
owes a huge debt to Norman Dewis.
His incredible skills have resulted
in some of the finest cars this company has ever made – whether they
were designed for the road or the
racing circuit. The Norman Dewis of
today is the same quietly confident
and modest man of the 1950s – he
remains a world-class Jaguar ambassador. It is fantastic to see his
contribution to Jaguar, and to British
engineering, recognised in Her Majesty’s New Year Honours List, with
the award of an OBE.”
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