Alan and Richard Jensen and a small West Bromwich firm
Jensen began with two brothers. Alan and Richard Jensen made their name in coachbuilding in the early 1930s, bodying other manufacturers’ chassis, and in 1934 they formalised the business as Jensen Motors in West Bromwich. Alongside building bodies and commercial vehicles for others, the firm developed its own cars, and after the war it settled on a distinctive formula: British-built, often hand-finished bodies powered by big, cheap, durable American V8 engines.
That formula gave Jensen a character all its own. The company was always small, building cars in hundreds rather than thousands, and it leaned on bought-in American power and, at times, Italian styling to punch far above its size. It also made Jensen vulnerable, and when the 1970s turned against it the firm could not survive, closing in 1976. The cars it left behind are among the most individual Britain produced.
Jensen at auction
What a classic Jensen sells for at auction
- Median sale, 2025
- £23,625 Down from £24,844 in 2021
- Sales in 2025
- 51 59 in 2021, the most we have recorded
- Sold when offered
- 71.8% Of the cars put up for auction since 1996
- The record
- £173k Ford Tourer, RM Sotheby's, January 2016
The fibreglass years and the CV8
The Jensen of the early 1960s was the CV8, a fast, fibreglass- bodied four-seater with a big Chrysler V8 and a steeply slanted four-headlamp face that divided opinion then and still does. Glassfibre let a small firm build a low-volume car without costly steel tooling, and the CV8 was genuinely quick, one of the fastest four-seaters of its day. It is the rare and characterful elder of the range, and the direct ancestor of the cars that made Jensen famous.
The Interceptor and the four-wheel-drive FF
In 1966 Jensen swapped the CV8’s controversial fibreglass for a steel body styled in Italy by Carrozzeria Touring, and the Interceptor was the result: a long, elegant fastback crowned by a vast wraparound glass tailgate, still powered by a Chrysler V8. It became the car Jensen is remembered for, and ran in Mk I to Mk III forms, with a high-output SP and a sought-after convertible, until the company closed.
Alongside it came one of the most significant British cars of the decade. The FF shared the Interceptor’s body but added four-wheel drive and anti-lock brakes, both years before the rest of the industry. Widely regarded as the first four-wheel-drive production car and the first with anti-lock braking, it was complex, costly and built in tiny numbers, which makes it the rarest and most historic Jensen of all.
The Jensen-Healey: the bid for volume
Jensen’s last new model pulled in the opposite direction. The Jensen-Healey of 1972 was an affordable two-seat roadster, built with Donald Healey to replace the lost Austin-Healey 3000 and sell in real volume, especially in the United States. It used the first production Lotus engine, a 16-valve twin-cam, and a later sporting-estate version, the Jensen GT, added practicality. It became the best-selling Jensen of all, but the new engine’s early troubles and the costs they brought were part of what finally broke the company.
Buying and owning a classic Jensen
Two things unite ownership across the range. The first is rust: every steel- bodied Jensen corrodes in the usual structural places, and on these low-volume, hand-built cars a sound shell is worth far more than a low mileage, because body restoration is slow and expensive. The CV8’s fibreglass avoids rust but brings its own repair needs over a steel chassis that still corrodes.
The second is the drivetrain. The Chrysler V8s of the CV8, Interceptor and FF are tough and cheap to keep, if thirsty; the FF’s four-wheel-drive hardware is the specialised exception that needs knowledgeable care; and the Jensen-Healey’s Lotus engine must have had its known faults addressed. Beyond that, a classic Jensen asks the same storage, insurance and patient upkeep of an owner as any car of its age, and most are now old enough for historic vehicle status.
More photos
