The Life & Legacy of Wally Hassan

THERE ARE SEVERAL people who have had a major impact on the car world over the years but only a very few who had a career spanning over a century.

Walter Thomas Frederick “Wally” Hassan was born in London on April 25, 1905. His uncle was keen on making model ships and the young Wally was captivated by them. From that day forward, Wally was hooked on all things mechanical and his uncle encouraged him to learn everything he could about the new-fangled modes of transport that were springing up in factories all over the world. Leaving school early, Wally enrolled in a trade school in Hackney, near to the family home, to study engineering and he quickly excelled in his studies. After passing his exams, and still just over 15 years old, this bright young lad obtained his first job with a small new company based in a back street mews house in North London owned by Walter Owen Bentley. Known by everyone as WO, Bentley had only recently finished his first car, a 3-litre, 4-cylinder model that would go on to win the hearts of fast-living playboy drivers the world over.

Hassan was the fourteenth employee in the company, and he started work as a fitter in the engine shop before moving on to the chassis shop, thus experiencing every aspect of the 3-litre production line. Hassan was much admired by WO, who encouraged the boy to move on to road testing work under another Bentley legend, Frank Clement, then the head of the experimental department and Bentley’s professional racing driver. Clement befriended the young apprentice, and Wally often rode as a mechanic in some races, especially at the fast, banked Brooklands circuit where many of the Bentley models were tested and raced.

After a period of just a few years, he was regarded by the rest of the staff as the best of the small group of Bentley mechanics and this prompted one of Bentleys legendary customers, diamond mine owner Woolf Barnato, to choose him for his own personal racing car projects. Barnato was by then one of the famous “Bentley Boys” and by the mid-1920s, he was also the main shareholder and Chairman of Bentley Motors, a position he held throughout Bentley’s short but illustrious history. Barnato trusted Hassan implicitly; the two men got on well and remained life-long friends until Barnato’s death in 1948.

Unfortunately, Bentley Motors suffered greatly during the depression and sales of their road-going cars slumped and the business was put into liquidation. After several attempts to save the company, Rolls Royce stepped in and bought the company in late 1931. Barnato, who had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds (millions in today’s values) subsidizing Bentley, kept Hassan on as his personal mechanic to maintain his many race and road cars.

In 1934, Hassan built the hugely successful and still famous race car that is still raced today — the Barnato Hassan. This was a Bentley-based special, originally with a 6 ½ litre engine, which was driven by Barnato and Dudley Froy at Brooklands. From 1934 until 1938, the Barnato Hassan competed in 25 races and broke the Brooklands circuit record several times with an unofficial lap of over 143 mph in September 1938. Later, this car was fitted with an 8-litre Bentley engine and it continued to lap the bumpy Brooklands track at well over 140mph every time.

For the 1936 season, Hassan and another ex-Bentley mechanic, Wally Saunders, built another famous Bentley special for Bill Pacey. It too still survives. Hassan designed his own specially pressed chassis side members to produce a proper central- seater instead of the Barnato-Hassan’s offset layout. The Pacey Hassan chassis and the 4 ½ litre Bentley engine were clad in a slim body built by Thomson & Taylor who had a workshop at Brooklands. This also raced with great success at Brooklands and at Donnington, often against the more powerful Barnato Hassan. Both cars have survived and are often seen at vintage racing events driven by today’s Bentley Boys.

Towards the end of the great vintage racing era of the late 1930s, race cars were getting much lighter and more agile. The famous racing driver Raymond Mays had noted Hassan’s skills with engines and in 1937 offered him a job with his English Racing Automobiles stable based in Bourne in Lincolnshire, north of London. Hassan worked there with Peter Berthon on engine development and also at Brooklands with Thomson & Taylor on ERA chassis development. ERAs were one of the most dominant race cars of their day and are still some of the fastest vintage racers to be campaigned in historic racing.

After the war, Berthon and Mays joined forces again to establish BRM — British Racing Motors, another great British name in grand prix history. Sadly, they left Wally behind and in later years Hassan commented that he was not as happy with ERA and Mays as he had been with Bentley and Barnato.

In 1937, after only six months at Bourne, the British automotive engineer and designer of land and water speed record breakers, Reid Railton, also of Napier Railton fame, asked him to return to Thomson & Taylor in Brooklands to work on a 400 mph Land Speed Record car for John Cobb. Brooklands at that time was the epicenter of British racing with many small engineering companies based at the track. Hassan’s job at Railton was to make each project happen and the Railton projects received worldwide acclaim when Cobb twice broke the Land Speed Record in a streamlined, twin-engined machine built with much input from Hassan.

Wally Hassan’s next chapter began just before the outbreak of the Second World War. At the September 1938 Motor Cycle Club race meeting at Brooklands, SS Jaguar owner William Lyons asked his old friend Tommy Wisdom (yet another Brooklands legend) what he thought about an engineer called Walter Hassan. Although they had never met, Lyons had heard his name mentioned over the years as one of the best in the business. SS Cars was developing fast, and their chief engineer William Heynes needed an assistant to work in the burgeoning company. By that time the new SS company had moved on from building motorcycle sidecars as Swallow Coachbuilding and were now selling their sporty SS 100 two seaters as fast as they could finish them.

Wisdom gave Hassan an excellent reference during the conversation with Lyons and the result was that Lyons offered him a job at the SS factory in Coventry in the midlands. Not yet 35 years old, Wally joined SS Cars as Chief Experimental Engineer and, at first, worked on tuning the SS 100 engines for racing. He was also instrumental in designing a new lightweight sporty chassis with independent front suspension for a future car that would make the company’s name famous — the XK120.

Hassan enjoyed working at SS Cars immensely and had a close working relationship with Lyons, as he recalled later in his life: “If you were honest with him, Lyons appreciated it. You had to have the courage of your convictions. When I first joined, I found him rather formal but as we got to know each other I found that he was quite approachable and would listen to one’s own point of view. It always paid to be fair and square with Sir William.”

At the outbreak of war in September 1939, Hassan left SS Cars to work on aircraft engine development at the Bristol Aircraft Company at Filton, just north of Bristol, but he returned to Coventry a year later. During the German bombing raids aimed at factories across England, Hassan spent many evenings on fire-watching duty often alongside Heynes and another Jaguar engineer Claude Baily who had joined the company from Morris in 1940.

They would often pass the time discussing with Lyons plans for a revolutionary post-war engine — the now famous XK engine that would be the heart of Jaguar production once hostilities ended. Hassan later recalled: “Lyons was enthusiastic about plans for the post-war years and would listen to us discussing the engine, which he said had to ‘look good’. Lyons was not an engineer but he was good at gathering a good team around him.”

By 1949, having seen the XK engine through its development phase and installed in the sleek of XK120, Hassan left Jaguar and joined another engine building company Coventry Climax. Here he worked Harry Mundy on a lightweight, overhead-cam unit first intended for use with fire pumps. Having completed the fire pump engine Mundy and Hassan continued developing it for use in motor racing.

One of the band of newcomers to post-war racing in Britain, Colin Chapman of Lotus fame was one of the first to see the potential and very quickly, Lotus cars were soon winning races across Europe and America. Driving a Coventry Climax powered Lotus, Jim Clark became World Champion twice and Coventry Climax engines gave Lotus further successes in Formula 2 and in the Le Mans 24-hour race. Walter continued his work on the Climax engines until 1963 when Jaguar bought the company, bringing Walter back into the fold along with his fellow engineer Harry Mundy.

In the early 1960s, with the startlingly beautiful E-Type making headlines, Jaguar now had four of the most talented engineers in the country working together. William Heynes and Claude Baily had been working on a new V12 engine, and they now added the benefit of Hassan and Mundy to redesign and work on the project. Ironically, WO Bentley had also designed a V12 for Lagonda after his own company was sold. The origins of a Jaguar V12 engine can be traced back to 1952 when a 4.9 liter XK V12 engine was one of Jaguars experimental projects. The unit consisted of two six- cylinder XK heads mounted on a new V shaped block.

The engine was intended to power a prototype race car for Le Mans and would also be used in their future road models. Before it was launched, Hassan believed the V12 to be too heavy for the Jaguar XJ6, then in design, or the proposed Series III E-Type. The four engineers set about designing an alternative V12 engine and various configurations were tested.

After several years of development, the 5.3 litre Jaguar V12 was unveiled in 1971 and over the years, this engine was fitted to the E -Type, the XJ-S and the XJ12 saloon. Another very special project in the 1960s was the Jaguar XJ13. Just four lightweight, dual overhead camshaft engines were built for the aerodynamic racer in order to beat the Ferraris and Ford GT40s at Le Mans.

Sadly, with Jaguar’s chief test driver, the late-great Norman Dewis, at the wheel, the XJ13 crashed rather spectacularly while testing and the project was scrapped. Although just one original car was completed, which still survives today, one other tool-room “recreation” using one of the original XJ13 engines has just been finished in England. Towards the end of his career, Walter Hassan continued to develop the V12 engine until he retired from Jaguar on 28 April 1972.

Possibly prompted by Prince Philip, who was very keen on the British motor industry, Walter “Wally” Hassan was awarded the OBE by Queen Elizabeth for services to the motor industry, and he remained active with various engineering projects and consultancy work well into his eighties. Following the death of his wife, Ethel, he lived with one of his sons and later he moved to a Motor Industries Retirement Home at Easenhall in Warwickshire.

In April 1995 he celebrated his ninetieth birthday with many of his old friends and colleagues who all paid tribute to one of the countries’ great automotive engineers. In July 1996, aged 91, Wally died at Easenhall, close to his beloved Jaguar factory. He left behind a huge legacy of great race cars from both pre-war and post-war days and is without doubt one of the unsung heroes of the automotive world.

About The Author