CKL Historic Motors

On June 22^nd, 2022 Senlac Rotary visited CKL Historic Motors in Marley Lane, Battle. Chris Keith-Lucas was the founder of the company and it was he who with, Mark, the operations manager, showed us around.

Chris explained that CKL Developments has grown into the world’s leading specialist in Jaguar and Jaguar-powered sports cars of the 1950’s and 1960’s with an unrivalled expertise in C types, D types/XKSS, Lightweight E types, Listers, historic examples of the XK range and Jaguar’s sporting saloons. They have worked on many other fine marques such as Allard, Tojeiro, HWM, Cooper, Austin Healey and Lotus to name a few. CKL’s main activities include repair and restoration of classic cars and track related work for competition minded customers as well as sales and sourcing.

And what a sight it was to see so many classic cars together in the workshops without even thinking about the £millions value of them.  Chris highlighted a number of the cars explaining their history from the replica Jaguar XKSS worth £10m to the Jaguar C type which in 1953 was the first Jaguar winner of Le Mans 24 and still equipped with the second set of disc brakes ever manufactured.  Sitting in the body shop was a Jaguar that had been badly damaged while being driven in North America; the American insurance company had agreed for repairs at CKL and the cost of repairs is expected to be £250,000 for the one car!

The racing support team has been at Thruxton and Silverstone and this week are taking ten cars to the Le Mans 24.

Even for someone like me who knows little about cars, a car is something to get me from A to B, it was a truly fascinating and awe-inspiring visit.

If you would like to read more about CKL have a look at their website CKL.co.uk