26 Jul 2015 – Driven To Write

The Men Who Made the ’40 – Jim Randle

In the second of our postscripts to the XJ40 story, we profile its architect.

“To meet Jim Randle and to talk to him is to go into a quiet and refined world. Randle is a precise, immaculately tailored executive, whose voice is pitched so low you immediately know why an XJ12 is so refined.” (Motor historian, Graham Robson 1981)

When auto journalists profiled Jim Randle, the same adjectives just kept cropping up. Following the dapper and avuncular William Heynes and the professorial Bob Knight, Randle was an engineering chief from Jaguar central casting. Quiet spoken, brilliantly clever and refreshingly free of ego, Randle was the engineer’s engineer. Continue reading “The Men Who Made the ’40 – Jim Randle”

Driven To Write is a collective of writers, fuelled by a passion for the motor car, its culture, its people and their stories. Our aim is to provide a distinctive voice and a diversity of automotive writing you may not find elsewhere. We hope you will join us on the journey.

DTW is non-commercial, self-funded, and contains no advertising.

All original content (words and images) hosted on this site remain the sole copyright of the authors and may not be reproduced or re-purposed in whole or in part without their written permission.