With Hill setting up his luxury car business he saved time on his next track project by simply buying an existing super saloon, this being the ex-Tony Hazelwood Jaguar XJ8 with its 7-litre Can Am engine for 1978. Of course Hill made a few changes with revised bodywork and that nose that had famously gone was thankfully restored with a Jag grill. The other develpoment was the emergance of the Donington Park circuit from decades of disuse. Hill loved the track which was only a few miles from his Draycott home and described it as the finest circuit in Europe !

With the Super Saloon bubble having burst the top drivers of the day gravited to the new Donington GT Championship. Doug Niven won the big class in the inaurgual season in Hill`s old Beetle and Mick was back creating his next monster to replace the bulky Jag for 1979. The Jag was wrongly reported in the motoring press as having been destroyed in a garage fire but in fact only part of the floorpan was damaged. Remarkably the Hill family have provided several photos of the car post fire.  The internals were stripped out and used in Hill next creation, the Skoda 'Phoenix' . No prizes why he called it that.

The spaceframe clothed in its shell but less anything else turned up at Auction about 10 years ago. Jaguar racer Kevin Doyle aquired it and began the difficult process of rebuilding her. This was an under the radar project as like other owners of iconic cars not to make public knowlegde so to manage expectation levels of such cars return to the track. I only found out because I bumped into Kevin as we were both on the way the stairs to have a quick chat with Marcus Pye in the Mallory Park commentry box before racing commenced. Kevin had enlargment photos of the Jaguars cockpit and was suprised I recognised the car without him telling me. The exposed Surtees engine in the passenger seat footwell is almost unmistakable.

Kevin later sold the project to another enthusiast who has moved the challenging rebuild / reconstruction on further so fingers crossed.