Owen Sedanca
Car of the Day #221: 1973 Owen Sedanca – Estate Coupé
I believe that certain types of vehicles are unique in time and place, for instance, muscular European grand tourers like the Lamborghini Espada.
A form of transportation originally designed for the Jet Set was replaced by actual jets as airfare costs fell sharply. Why bother with the pain and expense of maintaining a continental bruiser like the Espada, when a Ryanair flight from London's Heathrow to Barcelona, Spain is half the cost of an oil change and you can rent a new Porsche at Hertz?
Of course, we know this now. Back in the '70s, it must have seemed like a great idea to woo the upper class with a made-in-Britain GT coupé, and that's exactly what Jaguar dealership HR Owen (the “Owen” in Sedanca) commissioned north London coachbuilders Williams & Pritchard to create.
Because one of their salespeople pitched the idea.
Early sketches for the car • via aronline.co.uk
Naturally, one of the salespeople at this high-end dealer was also a car designer — Chris Humberstone — who appeared here with the Rapport Ritz and the incredible active aero…Honda Accord*.
The brief was so simple, and has been successful in the past, so why wouldn’t this concept for a high-end car work? Resurrecting a dead brand (Owen)…re-bodying an existing luxury car…double the price…it’s a dance that happens all the time.
Take a donor Jaguar XJ chassis, craft a flowing but ultimately bulky body on top, and ask punters to wait in line for the £8,500 car. That's twice the price of the donor car, by the way. At least an integrated roll bar was grafted onto the Jaguar’s floor plan.
Incredibly, as many as 80 deposits came in before — you guessed it — the OAPEC oil embargo tightened everyone's belts and orders dried up.
Original Owen Sedanca brochure • via aronline.co.uk
• via aronline.co.uk, source unknown
The first car was sold to an Oxford resident, whose daughter relayed to aronline.co.uk that her mother commissioned the car while they lived in that area. By the time the car was finished, it was delivered to the buyer’s new residence.
The person who bought this family’s original Oxford estate then purchased the car, purportedly for his son. (This is the white prototype car. Probably.)
A second car was built, commissioned by the same gentleman, for his other son. (The gold car…or the white car…)
