Thanksgiving lies behind us and Christmas is on its way: ice and snow will now be soon approaching. Well, they are when you are on this side of the world. Over in the Antipodes Spring is slowly turning into Summer, with temperatures easily reaching 30 Degrees Celsius. It’s there these sunny picture were taken and the car is a local product: the Taylorspeed Mini Jem. That's the Jem built under a license in Australia in very small numbers by John Taylor of Adelaide. These photographs come from the Peter Knight archives and show the car at the Mallala Raceway in Southern Australia, probably in 1968. I think the driver has to be John Taylor himself and the car probably is the red demonstrator seen in various Australian magazines at the time. Any more information is welcomed.
Taylorspeed Mini Jem, seen here at Mallala Raceway in Australia behind another Aussie Special
Picture courtesy Peter Knight
Just two handfulls of Taylorspeed Jems were built by John Taylor, who is probably seen here
Picture courtesy Peter Knight
That Jem is John Taylors. Another one was raced here a few years later by the writer. It was my daily drive so there was some careful racing. I now have 2 Jems including the bright orange one seen in pics. PH
ReplyDeleteWhat ever happened to John Taylor's Jem RWW019? I do know that Neil Murray had one himself with an 1100 motor in it back in the late 70s at his service station that I almost bought. I ended up buying Ziggy Kwiatkowski's Jem RKP850. I met up with John Taylor, he was a busy man but he gave me 20 minutes of his time for Jem small talk at his then dealership in Medindie Adelaide.
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