22 July 2026
Months of planning culminated in a fantastic National Day at Brooklands. A huge thank you to all that came with their cars. We’d also like to thank our fantastic marshals from JDC and Brooklands that made sure arrival and parking up on the Sunday morning was trouble free.
We hope everyone enjoyed their goody bag containing a reprint of Issue #1 of Jaguar Driver from 1958 and Programme for the day, with a cover that matched the magazine.
The Timeline, Riwax Trophy, XK Register, XJS and E-types had their own designated parking zones and the Areas that requested space were all accommodated with everyone else finished for the finishing straight.
JDHT and some of our members took their cars up the Test Hill and we have video evidence to prove that the JDHT cars aren’t pampered static museum displays!
Over 170 members enjoyed dinner in the York Suite at the Oatlands Park Hotel following welcome drinks on a very warm terrace. The evening was stitched together seamlessly by our be-kilted new director, from Scotland, Andrew Martin. After-dinner speaker Alex Patterson, CEO of Brooklands, welcomed us to his museum and gave us a brief history together with details of their new Grand Prix Centenary exhibition.
The raffle draw, with proceeds going to our chosen charity Headway, was followed by Tony Merrygold presenting the Chairman’s Trophy, as announced at April’s AGM, to a representative from JDC Scotland. A very surprised Paul Skilleter was then presented with the Bob Berry Trophy for his services to the Club over many years.
An even more surprised Tony Merrygold was then presented with a brick by Georg Dönni from JDC Switzerland. To plagiarise an M&S advert, this was not just any brick, but one which Georg had rescued from the Browns Lane demolition complete with engraved plaque and JDC Switzerland badge.
In addition to Georg Dönni’s brick presentation, Hannes Schaffer from Austria’s Area 79 distributed a number of bottles of their own label JDC Prosecco, which they normally serve in their Sir William Pub while on tour in Austria.
Hans-Juergen Wenzl from Area 77 at the other end of Austria also presented Tony Merrygold with a gift – this time a snow globe, not just any snow globe – but one containing our 70th Anniversary logo and models of a Mark II and an E-type.
Tony was surprised as he said: “I struggle to get enough luggage in my E-type when touring let alone bricks, bottles of wine and snow globes.”
Congratulations to Robert Brown and his stunning blue V8 XJ Reg YK51VMP for winning the coveted RIWAX Trophy as well as a fantastic RIWAX polishing set. Runners up prizes were given to Hayley Tonks’ red XFR Reg H7AFB and Nigel Heywood’s blue XJ6 Reg J10VJJ.
Please join us in welcoming these new members who have joined the JDC in the past month.
The joint auction between THE MARKET and the Club proved to be a great success. Apart from the ‘special offer’ regards reduced entry costs to Members, interest was high and the sales rate was perfect, with 100% of the lots being sold; a result which is almost unheard of in the auction world.
See the results here here
