Author: Nathan Chadwick
Images: EVRO Publishing
Any good piece of writing is never the work of a moment. However, for Gordon Jones, author of Lola: The T70 & Can-Am Cars, those ‘moments’ became decades. In fact, when he first set out to write a definitive history of Eric Broadley’s most outrageous creations, Lola was still producing cars.
That was in 1985 – and Evro has only recently published the book after decades of research, lost materials and an AWOL collaborator. So we asked Gordon how it all started.
“I’d just finished my Ford GT40 book, and I was hanging around the Lola factory a lot,” he recalls. “Lola’s staff were quite happy to help me with information, and were enthusiastic about the project.”
It was during this time that Jones met Anders Hedberg, a Swedish enthusiast for all things Lola T70, who owned Sid Taylor’s SL73/102 MkIII coupé. “We got on very well,”says Gordon. “He came to stay with me for a few weeks while I was living in Doncaster, and we went around circuits visiting people who were testing their cars. I mentioned I was writing about these cars, and he said ‘Oh, so am I!’ – we both decided it was best to compare notes.”
There followed a free-flowing information swap, checking that their databases were correct and up to date. Anders would spend a great deal of time tracking down US race programmes and copies of Autoweek, and Gordon would meticulously accumulate further information.
Then disaster struck. “In 1988 I sent him 125 photographs and copies of all my notes for him to put into a computer, but I heard nothing back from him,” Gordon recalls.
At the time Gordon was working as a computer industry consultant, with writing as a hobby. After receiving no reply to letters and calls, in 1991 he set off to Sweden to find Anders. “He wasn’t at his address; the neighbours said that he hadn’t been well, and had moved to central Stockholm,” he recalls. “He wasn’t there, either.” Gordon even reached out to Anders’s parents, to no avail.
It seemed like all the work was for nothing. “I gave up, I was so disheartened,” he says. He abandoned other book projects, too. “I’d wanted to do a book on Chaparral, but I realised that unless you could live next door to Jim Hall in Texas, you’d never get the answers.”
However, as with all great stories, there was a twist. In 2012, the unopened package was returned to Doncaster – only by this point Gordon had moved to France. “The new occupants asked their neighbour, my friend Barbara, about it and she said ‘Ah, it must be the lost parcel’.”
Reunited with his work, Gordon set about further research. Then in 2016, some of Anders’s friends got in touch – they’d found him, in Motala, Sweden. “He’d been unable to contact me because I’d moved around, too.”
Gordon was re-enthused about the book, although Anders was more wary, citing ill health. Still, databases were shared and contact went back and forth, yet in late 2017 Anders wrote to say he couldn’t continue.
“He agreed to send his notes over, but then I heard nothing,” Gordon says. “I knew a photographer who lived in Motala, who discovered that Anders had died in January 2018. His Lola had been sold to a dealer in central Europe, then to an American. It’s now in England being restored.”
With help from Anders’s brothers, the database and materials were passed to Gordon to complete the book. The only issue was that Lola’s Can-Am exploits were much wider-ranging than the T70. “It was the T163, T220, T260 (as driven by Jackie Stewart) and T310,” he says.
Cue more years of research, aided by Martin Krejčí, the creator of www.racingsportscars.com.
While Gordon’s relief at publishing the book is palpable, there are no plans for more. “I don’t think I’m allowed to spend more time writing – it’s upset the family, me just sitting in front of a computer for five years, doing nothing else,” he laughs.
Have you read Gordon Jones’ Lola: The T70 & Can-Am Cars? We would love to hear from you at hdc@hagerty.co.uk.