Bob Ktight

Jaguar’s unsung hero – pictured above, with glasses – fought the diktats of British Leyland and conjured up dynamic magic

WORDS GILES CHAPMAN PHOTOGRAPH JAGUAR HERITAGE

ONLY AFTER BOB KNIGHT cleared his desk, turned out the light and departed for home for the final time, did his immense contribution to Jaguar’s survival become apparent. He’d engineered the world’s finest car and then ‘saved’ the company, although not with any bold vision of the future. Knight doggedly held together Jaguar’s independent nucleus – its close-knit engineering and design teams, operating on shoestrings – while British Leyland seemed hellbent on destroying the company’s soul. History has proved him to be Jaguar’s unsung hero, manifested as a chain-smoking procrastinator who drove colleagues potty with his quest for perfection. Born in 1920, Knight attended Coventry’s Bablake School before graduating from Birmingham University with a BSc in mechanical engineering. He joined what was then SS Cars in 1944 as a technical assistant…

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Octane (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2015

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