Phil Hill’s brother in law, Los Angles based Architect Don Parkinson is known to have raced a Fraser Nash at least once in 1949 before buying an Jaguar XK120 for the 1950 season.

Don is known to have raced the XK120 on at least four occasions, winning at Carrell Speedway in February 1951 before hitting a tree and rolling the car during practice for an event at Pebble Beach in May 1951.

Unharmed and undeterred by the mishap Don had the car rebuilt as a special enlisting International Motors Hollywood mechanic Jim Thrall to move the motor back 12 inches in the chassis and offset it by 4 inches.

Teenager Robert Cumberford is credited for the design of the specials body which was crafted from aluminium by Marvin Faw, under supervision of Phil Hill.

In October 1951 Don drove his Special to a class win at Reno first time out and then recorded an outright win at Palm Springs the following week.

Don raced the car on at least eight occasions until May 1953 never finishing below 5th place before apparently retiring from the sport.

My thanks to Geoffrey Horton for sharing his photograph of the car seen at the Sonoma Historics meeting earlier this year.

Thanks for joining me on this “Teen Designed Body” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow when I’ll be looking at a Shadow. Don’t forget to come back now !