The Jensen GT would be the last production car ever made by the British automaker. It was essentially the shooting brake version of the earlier Jensen-Healey, and it shared the earlier car’s 2.0 liter Lotus engine and 5-speed transmission.
The Jensen-Healey would become one of very few cars to win the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) D Production Championship in its first year of competition. It eventually won SCCA National D Championships, forever cementing its place in sports car history.
Fast Facts – The Jensen GT
- The Jensen GT, a shooting brake version of the Jensen-Healey, was the last car produced by Jensen Motors. It shared the 2.0 liter Lotus 907 engine and a 5-speed transmission, with just 511 units produced between 1975-1976 before Jensen went into receivership.
- The Jensen-Healey, developed with Donald Healey and powered by a Lotus engine, aimed to slot into the market between the Triumph TR6 and Jaguar E-Type. Despite early reliability issues, it found success in motorsport, winning multiple SCCA D Production Championships in the USA.
- The Jensen GT featured a fixed roof, two rear seats, and an upgraded interior with a burr walnut dashboard and air conditioning for US models (optional in other markets). It debuted at the 1975 Earls Court Motor Show amid Jensen Motors’ financial struggles.
- The 1975 Jensen GT featured here is finished in white with a tan interior and it’s now being sold in the UK with documentation spanning 30 years. It’s a well-preserved example of a rare model, with only 61 known to remain in the UK and an unknown number in the US.
A History Speedrun: The Jensen GT
Just 511 examples of the GT would be built between 1975 and 1976 before Jensen Motors went into receivership. As a result it remains a car almost entirely unknown in the wider vintage car community, despite its remarkable triple-barreled heritage of Jensen/Healey/Lotus and the wild success in motorsport of the Jensen-Healey that it was based on.
The styling of the Jensen GT an the earlier Jensen-Healey were largely the same, except for the addition of that shooting brake roof on the GT.
The Jensen-Healey
The story of the Jensen GT can’t be told without first discussing the earlier Jensen-Healey – a car that had been developed to slot into a market segment between the Triumph TR6 and MGB, and the higher-end Jaguar E-Type.
The Jensen-Healey was developed as a joint project between Jensen Motors and Donald Healey, with US auto importer Kjell Qvale joining them. Jensen had been building the bodies for Donald Healey’s sports cars for decades and when the Austin-Healey 3000 finally left production, Donald realized he needed something more modern to replace it.
The body of the new car was designed by Hugo Poole and then later modified by William Towns. It was a unibody design with independent front suspension on coils, a live axle rear on coils with trailing arms, and front disc brakes with rear drums.
Much of the running gear was sourced from the already-in-production Vauxhall Firenza, helping to vastly reduce development time. Much effort was expended to find a suitable engine, it needed to be lightweight and have a minimum of 130 bhp in order to give the car the required performance.
They looked at the BMW M10, the Ford V6, and some engines from Vauxhall. Some lacked the required power and some simply weren’t powerful enough. This was where Colin Chapman of Lotus came into the picture, offering his then-new Lotus 907 inline four – an all-alloy twin cam design with 144 bhp.
This is the Lotus 907 inline four, it’s an all-alloy twin cam design producing 144 bhp.
A deal was struck, and the Lotus engine would power all versions of the Jensen-Healey and the later Jensen GT. Production of the Jensen-Healey began in 1972 in West Bromwich, England – although the car showed much promise it would be blighted by bad luck, industrial action, and reliability woes.
Jensen engineers rapidly developed the car and it changed significantly from year to year, but the onset of the 1973 Oil Crisis caused fuel prices to skyrocket around the world, and it almost killed off all demand for the larger Jensen Interceptor overnight due to its large, thirsty American V8.
The Arrival Of The Jensen GT
With sales of the Interceptor tanking, a modified version of the Jensen-Healey was developed with a shooting brake fixed roof and two small rear seats to improve practicality. It had been the brainchild of Kjell Qvale, who had become a major shareholder at Jensen.
Qvale’s idea made a lot of sense. The Jensen GT was meant as a scaled down version of the Interceptor that might appeal to people who wanted the smaller, more fuel efficient 2.0 liter engine.
The GT was given a series of upgrades over the Jensen-Healey, it had a more luxurious interior with a burr walnut dashboard and American-delivered cars had air-conditioning fitted as standard.
The styling of the car seems to be something that people either love or hate, but there is a dedicated community on both sides of the Atlantic dedicated to keeping the Jensen-Healey and Jensen GT alive.
The GT would be shown to the world for the first time at the Earls Court Motor Show in 1975 but by this time Jensen Motors was already in receivership, attempting to restructure itself to remain viable.
This was all common knowledge and likely scared off many potential buyers, eventually they would build just 511 examples of the Jensen GT between 1975 and 1976 before finally ceasing all operations.
The GT slowly faded from the public consciousness, and many wouldn’t survive to the modern day due to rust, crashes, and junkyards. From the 511 made there are just 61 left in the UK and an unknown number in the United States.
The 1975 Jensen GT Shown Here
The car you see here is a Jensen GT from 1975 – the first year of production. It’s finished in White over a tan fabric interior, with a black sunroof, a stereo, and a burr walnut dashboard.
The interior of the Jensen GT was more opulent than the Jensen-Healey, it was developed to be closer to the luxurious Jensen Interceptor.
This is one of the nicest-looking examples of the GT that we’ve seen come up for sale in recent memory, so it’ll be interesting to see what it sells for when the hammer falls on its online auction with Car & Classic.
If you’d like to read more about this car or register to bid you can visit the listing here on Car & Classic. It’s being sold out of Hampshire in the United Kingdom and it comes with an up-to-date V5, a workshop manual, and numerous invoices dating back over 30 years.
Images courtesy of Car & Classic
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
