Vintage Thing No.75 - Mr Jo-jo

If Mr Jo-jo does not still exist, something very similar ought to be created. Photo provided by Phil Peters.

Back in June 2008 I waxed lyrical about Mrs Jo-jo, probably the most highly developed of all Brooklands Austin 7s.

Last week, Phil Peters got in touch about Mr Jo-jo. He'd been given a photograph of it by an elderly friend and neighbour and liked it so much he's put it on his blog. In his search for info on Mr Jo-jo he found my comments on the distaff side of the equipe but all I know about Mr Jo-jo is what I've been able to glean from The Austin 7 Source Book by Brain Purves, in which a copy of this very photo appears.

Mr Jo-jo was an Austin 7 Gordon England Cup model, Gordon England being an aviation pioneer and Austin 7 racer who subsequently offered his own sporting bodies on the baby Austin chassis. The Cup model was a very neat Austin 7 two seater introduced in 1925 and named either after the Goerges Boillot Cup at Boulogne or the Rudge Whitworth Biennial race at Le Mans. The Cup model continued to be available until 1928 when Austins themselves began to market Austin 7 sports cars.

According to the caption in The Austin 7 Source Book, this photograph was taken at Brooklands and shows Boyd-Carpenter, who was later largely responsible for Mrs Jo-jo's spectacular success, at the wheel. Boyd-Carpenter worked for George England, which probably helped in creating Mr Jo-jo. Mr Jo-jo was a 1926 car and in 1927 Boyd-Carpenter bought a streamlined Gordon England racer that had won the 1925 Brooklands 200 mile race and this car was subsequently developed into Mrs Jo-jo.

It's interesting to compare the two cars - Mr Jo-jo was sporty but reliable but the slightly older (and much racier!) Mrs Jo-jo appeared on the Brooklands scene a little later and is still with us.

Of course, this scant information's not enough for me, or Phil Peters.

Whatever happened to Mr Jo-jo? Does it (he?) still survive? And why Jo-jo at all?