Gary Cox, in conversation with Marcus Bicknell, 14 August 2025 at Laguna Seca
Some classic race-car owners enjoy fettling and polishing their pride and joy to be able to display them at chamois-leather gold-cufflink concours. Others, like Los Angeles realtor Gary Cox, prefer to prepare the car to the technical standards necessary to get on track and go racing. Welcome, Gary, to the ethic, the comradeship, the spannering duties, the roar of high performance engines and the smell of diff oil of the Del Monte Trophy Race Group and the owners of the front-engine drum-brake sports racing cars of 1948-1955.
You can download this complete interview and article in pdf.
Gary Cox holds his Rolex Trophy with Marcus Bicknell, Bill Rooklidge (who shared wrenching duties with Gary), and Rob Manson (steward of the Del Monte Trophy Race Group) August 2025.
The same day, Gary Cox agreed enthusiastically to sit down with Marcus Bicknell, the Del Monte Trophy Race Groupโs research, web, social media and PR guy, to talk about the car. Do please read on.
Marcus: tell us about your amazing 1954 Sutton Jaguar Special
Gary: Kirke Leonard, a mechanical engineer in Los Angeles, decided in 1953 to build his own race car. He was a prior racer with an MG TD. His parents had a machine shop so after he graduated from college and moved out to Los Angeles he worked for one of the larger aeronautical companies after the war and had access to a full shop. I did have a chance to talk to Kirke Leonard and he said at the time he was buying and selling old cars and old motorcycles as a side-line to his job so he was in an original motorhead. I talk to him on the phone at his home in Los Osos in Central California. I believe heโs still alive. I talked to him when he was 93 and he was very coherent and remembered the car well. There are a few articles written by his nephew on the car.
Leonard worked out of a borrowed single-car garage where he built the chassis. Rather than drawing engineering documents with everything laid out, he started by constructing the chassis and then he built the car around that frame. Itโs an interesting method of construction but itโs not unlike what all the hot-rodders did at the same time; they got body parts and they assembled them on a chassis. Leonard kinda reversed that; he built a chassis first and had an idea of the proportions, dimensions and the body shape. He didnโt draw engineering drawing as far as I know.
Marcus: can you describe the chassis rails? And the thicknesses?
Gary: Thatโs the interesting part and as far as I know thereโs really nothing else like it. The main chassis tubes are a ladder construction but 6 inch diameter thin wall tubes. I remember from my own engineering background that the strongest shape is a cylinder; what he calculated was that the bigger the diameter and the thinner the wall then the strength-to-weight ratio would be optimised. These big fat tubes go down the sides of the car with transverse cross members in 2-inch tube, all in steel. I donโt know what the gauge is.. Front suspension is solid axle with 4 link trailing parallel trailing arms. At the rear there are two lower trailing arms with an upper arm to the top of the diff that stops the axle tramping and skipping which Leonard called a โJag reactionโ device.
Leonard then had a body made for him and thatโs where Jack Sutton comes in. Sutton emigrated from Britain first to Canada after the war ended and then to Los Angeles to set up as S&S Autocraft. When he built the body for the Leonard’s Jaguar he was trading as โSutton of Hollywood Calif.โ and was already being referred to as โAmericaโs Scagliettiโ. Sutton was the Englishman who brought to the USA the British body working tool, the English wheel. Thatโs a metalworking tool used to shape sheet metal into compound curves. It works by stretching the metal between a profiled lower wheel and a smooth, upper wheel. This stretching process allows for the creation of complex shapes, such as those found in automotive bodies or aircraft panel. Before this tool, the English wheel, body builders had to use a hammer and a dolly to shape aluminum. With the English wheel it was possible to take a flat sheet of metal roll it through into the curve required. All the experts who had built airplanes in the war were looking for work, so the auto body industry was thriving.
So now a car-builder could make a buck that was fairly close to the shape that they wanted, take it to Sutton who would make them a complete body skin on the buck. Once it was back in Leonard โs hands he rolled all the edges where the fenders were and the doors were cut in.
Marcus: so then he installed a Jaguar straight-6 engine.
It was designed for a Jaguar engine, yes. He found a damaged Mk VII saloon in Las Vegas that in โ53 or โ54 wouldโve been fairly new car and probably with a fresh engine so he drove the engine, Moss gearbox and the instrument panel for his special back to LA in the back seat of his car.
Marcus: Why did Leonard not call the car a Leonard Jaguar special?
Not sure it had a name when built. Dick Van Rozeboom entered it as the “Sutton Jaguar Special” for the Pebble Beach Concours and Historics racing through the mid 1980’s.
Marcus: And Leonard went racing in 1954?
The car was finished in 54. We are not certain Kirke raced it; after he finished building the car I have a sense that he wasnโt all that excited about it anymore. When I called Kirke Leonard up in 2022 I said” I think I have your race car”. We discussed details and I sent him pictures which he verified expecting his being excited about being it touch with the car again. But no, he was on a mission so when the project was done, he was kinda onto the next one.
Did he build other cars?
I donโt believe he built any other cars. In 1957 or a bit later he sold the Sutton Jaguar Special to Robert Chamberlain who I believe was related to Jay Chamberlain, the west coast distributor of Lotus, Sunbeam, AC and some other well-known British marques. Chamberlain eventually sold it to Rozeboom in the late 1970’s as an old neglected race car in faded red paint (image, right). Apparently it had been sent back to Sutton for more racing modifications …front quarter lower heat vents, revised integrated instrument panel, driver headrest fairing, and rear quarter vent slats. The heat vent grills and rear vents are Sutton hallmarks evidenced on a Ferrari (250) he rebodied in period.
I have not been able to find accurate information on the carโs racing history with the Chamberlains. Back then in the 60s and 70s they didnโt really keep records and it was before vintage racing really took off so there was probably no real interest in it. It was an old race car that was non-competitive. The Jaguar engine mightโve been a problem and nobody really wanted to spend the time or money to resuscitate it. He sold it to Dick Van Rozeboom.
Marcus: What year did Van Rozeboom rebuild it?
I believe Rozeboom bought the car in 1979 and he spent two years restoring it for Pebble Beach. It was a full concours effort and by 1981 it was being showed and raced at Laguna Seca from 1981 thru 1986. I have a picture of Dick and his wife in the Jaguar on the Pebble award ramp and will have to confirm the year. I have the logbook and racing programs confirming its provenance. I believe the car did fairly well racing. It was a mid-pack car There was a bunch of things that I found on the suspension which surprised me that he did as well as he did, but he mustโve been a brave guy.
Marcus: Just stepping back a bit, your Sutton Jaguar Special of was not raced that much and not so well known as for example the Parkinson Jaguar Special and other Jaguar specials which were very famous and did race.
Yes but a lot of these cars end up in hands that keep the car in the back shop for 20 or 30 years intending to get it back on the track. My other car was the same, the Healey Chevy Special. I mean I never found any solid racing history but they looked definitely raced. But itโs a gap and its history that is yet to be discovered. Good looks probably saved them from being scrapped
Marcus: Letโs go with the story that Rozeboom sold it at some stage in 87 or 88.
Iโm not too sure what happened but there was some motivation for Rozeboom not racing anymore. The records show it was sold at auction in Monterey (Rick Cole?) around 1989. It was sold to an exotic car dealer in LA and shortly thereafter sold to the Eisenberg Collection in Washington State where it disappeared for the next 40 years or so. A few years before I bought it online pictures show it back in Monterey and in Texas. It was shown in 2017 at the Quail in Monterey Car Week (โEntrant: A. Joel Eisenberg & Co.โ). In 2022 the Eisenberg estate offered the car through a dealer in Washington where I eventually acquired the car.
Marcus: What year did you buy the Sutton Jaguar?
I bought it in 2022 and Iโve spent the next couple years trying to sort it out and itโs finally the point where carโs reliable enough and runs well enough to drive and so this (RMMR, Laguna Seca, August 2024) is its first outing for 40 years. I havenโt been on the track since 2019 so itโs an adventure.
Marcus: How did you do today on track today? Well it was wet. What was about yesterday?
I didnโt take it out that wet morning as I knew I had a clutch issue and my theory was that if the clutch is gonna go away Iโd rather save a little bit of it for at least two races of the Reunion weekend . I plan to just do warm-up laps so Iโm not a moving chicane or challenging anybody on the track. I just wanted to get it out there for the actual Reunion.
Marcus: and youโve done some track days
I havenโt …. it was kind of a rush. We got the engine figured out. We had some carburetion problems that were very difficult to diagnose and that got done about a month and a half ago and without the engine being a known entity I really was discouraged from working on everything around it so once weโve got the engine dynoed then itโs like a full course press to get everything else done and of course it was so late in the season that to get a test day in anywhere was impossible. Normal crunch and load!
Marcus: It sounds to me that you havenโt had a lot of time on set up like camber, caster and toe-in.
No. Some of that is determined by the front axle which is a solid axle, a Kurtis axle, and the axle has a built-in camber so the caster can be adjusted with the four links by extending and the upper links but the chassis set up was a complete unknown. We also changed the shocks on it. I had to respring it The reason why I mentioned that it needed a lot of work to race with confidence. Is that the way it was put together was more like a show car. It was designed to look level on the ground. The spacers that were on the springs were really nice and pretty. They look like polyurethane spacers that were anywhere from two inches to an inch and a half thick and I when I disassembled them it turns out they made out of wood. So there were a number of things like that but basically said that Rozeboom was just a brave guy. The springs were, well, Rozeboom raced with the wooden spacers because the car was totally unchanged when it went into Eisenbergโs hands. So also the springs were different in every corner and there were outer spring and in spring and very, very soft. I took him to have them tested so I have a base and the spring tester barely went that low so they would push on it. Theyโre just collapsing on. They were probably less than 200 lb and maybe 150 so I had to respring it. I ended up having a pretty substantial spring inventory as a result of that.
Marcus: Is it coil-over?
It was built as a coil-over with a Koni shock inside the outer spring and because the Konis were very hard to adjust back then it was restored – just getting to the shocks was such an issue – they were changed to having shocks external.
Marcus: Anything else unique about the Sutton?
I think the suspension is extremely unique not only in the Specials world but in also terms of the transition where the Americans returning from the war were building hot rods and wanted to go racing. I canโt say for certain but I think itโs unique in the respect that it is truly a European sports car shape on what is a traditional hot rod underpinning with the four link suspension in the front which is unique in race cars except for some Indy cars of the day, which is what Kurtis did also. His Indy cars work with torsion bar across four link suspension so I think the suspension and that era is what makes this car really unique. The cherry on the cake is that itโs a Jack Sutton body that brought it all together and those modifications that make it look as good as it does today. I take no credit for that but I think it made it survive. Had to been any less of a of a car it probably wouldโve been difficult to have a taken up space in someoneโs collection for as many years.
Marcus: Letโs talk about just briefly the other cars youโve raced, the Healey for example, others?
How far back do you wanna go? I can go back to 2000 thatโs when I first started racing so a very quick summary. For the initial years I had an ex La Carrera Mercedes 190 SL. ..one of five converted to road racing in the US. After that I got into BMWs, raced 2002s for four or five years. Around 2013 I bought my first Special which was the Jaguar Blackjack Special …also a late-50s build, well known, and raced extensivley in the central US and the Bahamas. The power was addicting but I didnโt tuck into the car very well due to my height. After that I found the 1953 Healey Chevy Special up in Reno and it was kind of the typical project that I seems to find me; it just needed a lot of work. It had been sitting for a long time, had a cosmetic restoration, then sold after its first race in Coronado in 2005. Later when I talked to the first owner, his summary was …”the scariest car I’ve ever raced”. With a 265 cu.in. V8 Chevy it was quick and later discovered to be one of the first Big Healeys built as a race car from new. The Dennis Welsh catalog transformed the car which has been consistently a top finisher in the Historics. Again, didnโt quite fit so down the road it went.
Marcus: Where do you live and whatโs your local track??
I live in Newport Beach, California, so of course my local track would be all the desert ones but I was a VARA member for years and I drove most of them for years. These days I prefer just a few events a year, mostly with the more selective organizations with Laguna Seca being my favorite.
Marcus: Whatโs your profession and do any of the talents there link with motor racing and what you just said about running a unique car?
Maybe. I was in the commercial Real Estate business for many years – been retired for about 20 – I think in that world itโs problem-solving and I think if youโre in any sort of business that requires some sort of endurance and problem-solving I think that probably led me to this. Iโve been around cars since my high school days. I think if the stress doesnโt get to you itโs good therapy and if your wife puts up with it, its survivable.
SUTTON JAGUAR – specs
The 1954 Sutton Jaguar Special – Chassis C001 – is a hand-built, aluminum-bodied race car based on the Jaguar C Type, created by Leonard Kirk with fabrication by Jack Sutton. It’s a unique, rare vehicle, particularly known for its aluminum bodywork, which is more valuable than the standard steel bodies of the time.
Key Features and History of the Sutton Jaguar Special
- Chassis and 4200 cc DOHC inline-six 6 engine of the Jaguar XK120 features a block stamped with number 8L177127 and triple Weber 45 DCOE carburetors.
- Electric cooling fan, an alternator, an aluminum crankcase breather tank, Type C-badged valve covers, and a fuel pressure gauge. Three-into-one exhaust headers lead to dual outlets ahead of the right-rear wheel.
- Aluminum Body: The car’s open-cockpit body is made of aluminum, hand-built by Jack Sutton, an English metalworker, making it more valuable than a steel-bodied XK120.
- Four-speed manual transmission with straight-cut gears, four-wheel Dunlop disc brakes
- Suspension incorporates solid axles at each end, each with Panhard rods, torsion bars, telescopic shock absorbers, and coil springs with internal helper coils.
- Solid axles with torsion bars and Panhard rods at each end
- Chrome 16โ wire wheels, two-eared knock-off nuts. 185VR16 Pirelli Cinturato tires
- Driverโs roll hoop astride a headrest fairing
- Rear quarter louvers, fender vents, covered headlights, and a Jaguar nose badge.
- The cockpit houses a pair of fixed-back bucket seats trimmed in tan leather; matching upholstery covers the door panels, perimeter surfaces, and shifter boot.
- The driverโs seat is equipped with a Sparco harness, while a Simpson latch-and-link harness is in place on the passenger side.
- Hardura-style floor coverings, a drilled accelerator pedal, and a center tunnel-mounted fire extinguisher.
- The riveted wood-rimmed steering wheel frames Smiths instrumentation including a 140-mph speedometer, a 6k-rpm tachometer with an inset clock, and gauges monitoring fuel level, oil pressure, coolant temperature, and amperage. An auxiliary coolant temperature gauge is mounted to the driverโs right.
From the archives – 2019
Gary Cox: โWhen the following article was written nothing was known about the Kirke connection. The Sutton Jaguar was thought to be the Wilder car.โ ย
For every classic car there is a story that goes with it, often with several. And for those who collect classic cars, the story is a large part of the fun. Thatโs no exception for the 1954 Jaguar Special on display through March at the Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo, part of the museumโs Racing History Project. One of the stories behind this light blue race car with a thick white racing stripe down the center involves a boy and his father.
Reed Van Rozeboom hadnโt seen the car for 30 years when Mike Zaroudny contacted his father, Richard Van Rozeboom, about seven months ago. Zaroudny had recently become the custodian of the car previously owned by a friend in Seattle who didnโt know very much about its history.
โHeโs not really a car guy and didnโt know what he had,โ Zaroudny said about the previous owner. โI knew something was special about it though.โ
When Zaroudny found Richard Van Rozeboom, who owned the car in the 1980s, the story started to unfold. The car was built by Jack Sutton, a notable racing coach and car builder who had a company called S&S Autocraft. The car was built for Ed Wilder of Santa Monica who raced at the Santa Barbara Airport, Reeves Field in Long Beach, March Air Force Base and Willow Springs. Sutton took Wilderโs 1953 Jaguar XK-120 and completely rebuilt it to create a one-off supercharged racing special utilizing a custom tubular chassis and aluminum body, reducing the weight by 1,000 pounds.
Fast forward to 1985 when Reed Van Rozeboom and his father were ripping around Laguna Seca in the recently-restored race car.
โI spent a lot of time in the passenger seat of that car going around Laguna Seca and Willow Springs,โ he said. โA lot of fun with my dad in there.โ
Richard Van Rozeboom passed away over the summer of 2018. To see the car there at the Automobile Driving Museum during a kickoff for its display on Thursday, Jan. 17, Reed said was really special.
โI think if my dad was still around he would definitely be here today,โ Reed Van Rozeboom said.
While his father owned the car, most of the restoration work was completed, including installing a leather belt across the hood to keep it down.
โSome of the frame had to be fixed and reinforced especially the front fenders,โ Reed said. โIt wasnโt reinforced very well so a lot of parts were shaking that shouldnโt be shaking.โ
For Zaroudny, the current owner, he figured why not let other people enjoy the car rather than have it just sit in a garage someplace where its maintained by Fast Cars in Redondo Beach.
โIโm not a guy who would ever want to put something on a wall or a box and not have people see it,โ said Zaroudny who splits his time in Mexico. โCars like this are meant to be driven.โ
The Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo has roughly 60 classic cars on display at any given time, although they rotate the collection every week. Museum guests are welcome to open the door and climb inside any of the cars on the floor. Every Sunday, the museum offers rides in up to three cars from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Interesting addition to its history. The car is now in my garage after working thru a purchase with the last ownerโs estate. Apparently the 1987 auction buyer (dealer) sold it it to or thru The VIP Store (well known LA exotic car dealer at the time) to the last owner for $180,000 as confirmed by the estate and supported with a copy of the check in the auction. It confused me since the payee was MDR (Marina Del Ray, LLC) which was apparently the VIP Store entity.โจThe original builder (Kirke Leonard) has confirmed its origins with extensive photos thru the Van Rozeboom restoration. And it runs!! Hopefully on a track next year.
Gary adds in 2025 โฆ “As a side note, the Wilder car was racing in 1955 and the Kirke car was built in 1954 so they cannot be the same cars. ย The Kirke period build pictures leave no doubt as to it being my car.”
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