Early Javelin experience had a profound effect on the young Master Cropley
The Jowett Javelin was one of the first cars in which I was driven as a very young kid – the third car, I think. It sticks in the memory because one of my parents’ friends had one and was very proud of it, to the point of bothering to explain its finer points to a seven-year-old.
Unusually for the time, this woman loved cars and knew a lot about them: she was the person who first explained to me what was different about a flat-four engine (the Javelin had an aluminium 1.5-litre unit mounted ahead of the front wheels, driving the rears) compared with the inline fours and sixes contemporary cars had. She also talked about aerodynamics – this car, she reckoned, benefited very much from what we had learned about ‘streamlining’ from the wartime design of Spitfires and Hurricanes. She even explained torsion bar suspension (the Javelin had it at both ends) and how certain types of steel, made into bars, could act like springs if you twisted them.