The Highway Star

Sometimes you see a car and it just grabs your soul and won't let go. That is what happened to me in the mid-1980s when I first saw a Jensen Interceptor. I fell into a lust from which I have yet to recover. Not that I particularly want to recover! And that was just a picture of one. The first time I saw one in real life I knew I had to have one. It has taken 15 long years, but on April 11, 1999 I took possession of a 1976 Interceptor saloon, serial number 2211/1958. Here is some information about the car from the factory records:

	Body color:		Aruba Red
	Interior trim color:	Tan
	Engine number:		5C 00361
	Completion date:	March, 1976
	Destination country:	USA

Unlike some of my other dream cars, Interceptors are quite affordable. A convertible or coupe runs about $25,000, but a good saloon can be bought for less than $10,000. Both Hemming's Motor News and Auto Trader Online have searchable databases. Between those two sites and the Jensen-cars mailing list, I found a number of Interceptors for sale within a day's drive. The ones in Missouri and Kentucky were both sold before I got a chance to see them. The one in New Orleans was great, an extremely rare car that will be worth a lot of money when fixed up (only 12 like it ever built), but it was more of a project than I wanted to get into. The one near Orlando was OK, but I didn't really like the color and and it had the vinyl roof, ugh. The guy selling it was a bit of a jerk, which also put me off. He had taken the insurance coverage off the car and would not let me drive it. Guess he didn't want to sell it that bad.

The car I bought was in Cincinnati, Ohio but had only been there a couple of years. It has spent most of its life in Georgia, so there is absolutely no rust (a notorious problem with Interceptors). It has always been garaged, and never driven in the rain; the paint is in excellent shape for a car built in 1976. The ad sounded good, it was the exact color scheme I wanted (red paint, tan interior), and after talking to the seller by phone I was ready to drive the 6.5 hours right then and there to see it! I sent him some money to hold the car for me until I could get up there, and he sent some pictures. After seeing the pictures I was 99% sure this would be my car. I finally had a free day on March 27 and went up to see and drive it. It was even better in person than in the pictures, so I bought it. Two weeks later I rented a car one-way, drove up on Saturday, and drove the Interceptor back on Sunday. What a fun day that was!

I am the 4th owner. The 2nd and 3rd owners had put a lot of work into the car's mechanicals, so it runs great; it'll chirp the tires in 2nd gear! The transmission has been reworked. The steering rack (another notorious problem area) has been rebuilt and does not leak. The entire front suspension has been redone. A massive custom radiator and thermostatically controlled electric fans cure the overheating problem that plagues these cars. New freeze plugs have been installed on the engine. Extra insulation has been added to the firewall to help keep engine heat out of the passenger compartment. There's not a drip of fluid from any of the drivetrain components. All the usual problem areas have already been addressed, so all I have to do is get in and drive. And boy does it drive like a dream!

Of course, as always happens with a purchase like this, since I bought mine there have been some others come onto the market that look mighty interesting. Maybe I should have waited.....NAH!

The Interceptor is a hand-built car and was made in England from 1966 to 1976. (Jensen also built a car in the 1950s that was called Interceptor. Hmm, sounds familiar. Sunbeam Alpine, anyone?) The body shape for the later Interceptor was designed in Italy by the Vignale styling house. All later Interceptors use American Chrysler V8 engines, either 383 or 440 cubic inches. Mine, being a 1976 model, is known as the Mark III Series 5 and has the 440. That's 7.2 liters, quite a difference from the 1.6 liter engine in my Sidekick. It's my first car with a V8 engine...VROOM! The original factory horsepower rating is 220, with a tremendous 330 foot-pounds of torque. As you might expect, fuel economy is not that great, if I get 15 mpg I'll be doing good. Little wonder it was designed with a 24-gallon fuel tank. On the drive back from Cincinnati (425 miles) I got 11.6 mpg, but I wasn't exactly obeying the speed limit...

Update 5/3/99: After changing the speedometer drive gear to better match the oversize tires, I'm getting around 13 mpg.

Almost all Interceptors used the Chrysler TorqueFlite 727 3-speed automatic transmission and a Dana 60 limited-slip differential. About 32 right-hand drive Interceptors were built with manual transmissions, and exactly one LHD manual was built by the factory. It's for sale in France, but it's missing a few things. Like the engine. Here's the ad. £2500 is about $4000. The car will be worth ten times that when it's put back together, especially if the original engine can be found.

There were 5 different kinds of Interceptors built: saloons, convertibles, coupes, SPs, and FFs. Mine is a saloon. The FF is a saloon with all-wheel drive and anti-lock brakes. It was the first production car to have these features, and was declared the world's safest automobile when it was introduced in 1966. The SP was a saloon with a six-pack carburettor setup and 330 horsepower instead of 220 (some SPs were configured with high-compression engines that put out 385 hp!!!). Click here for a picture comparison of the various models.

The Interceptor was a very upscale car in its day, built to compete with the likes of Jaguar, Aston-Martin, and Bentley. It was designed to be a high-speed grand touring car for the upper class, a "gentleman's carriage" as one magazine put it. Top speed is around 135 mph. It is an extremely heavy car, about 4200 lbs., but it was intentionally designed that way. That weight gives it incredible stability at high speed. Now you know why I named it the 'Highway Star'! There weren't many options, nearly everything was included: leather interior, real wood dash, electric windows and door locks, power antenna, electric defogger for that massive rear glass, power steering, and air conditioning. We take all these things for granted on cars today, but in the late 1960s many of them were quite uncommon. An article in the October 1973 issue of Road & Track magazine said the Interceptor "ranks among the world's best cars."

Many Interceptors were owned by the rich and famous. Around the time I was searching for mine, there was an ad in Hemmings for a convertible that was once owned by Farrah Fawcett. Just a little bit out of my price range, though! Here's a list of some celebrities who owned Jensens. In 1976 a new Interceptor saloon would set you back about $16,000 (convertibles were about $25,000). That doesn't sound like much now, but consider that a Corvette cost about $8,000 in '76. So you can see just how upscale Interceptors were in their day. (A 1999 Corvette coupe costs about $45,000. All things being equal, if they were still being built, today an Interceptor saloon would set you back about $90,000. They actually tried to revive the company in the 1980s. Between 1984 and 1990 about 15 Interceptors were built. The price was $170,000 to $220,000.)

Here are some pictures of the Highway Star. Click on the small picture for a larger view. The larger views can take some time to load, the file size is given in parentheses.

	Here's a front 3/4 view (271K). My car does not have the original wheels. Neither of the two previous owners knows what happened to them, apparently the first owner installed these aftermarket Enkei wheels. I may eventually look for some original wheels, but am not in a hurry at this point. At first I was put off by the aftermarket wheels, but they have grown on me. The gold in the wheels matches quite nicely with the gold pinstripes. Click here for a picture of an Interceptor with the correct wheels (43K).
	Here's a side view (262K). The Italian design influences are obvious. You can clearly see the unique shape the rear glass gives the car.
	This is a front view (302K). If you see this in your rear-view mirror you might want to get out of the way!
	This interior view (282K) shows the leather interior and wood dash. The steering wheel is not typical, it is a Momo aftermarket wheel. There is a signature on it, but it is unreadable; presumably it is a race driver's signature. The wheel does have the Jensen logo in the center, so it must have been some factory or dealer option. The Alpine stereo cassette deck is not stock either; in 1976, 8-tracks ruled the car stereo world. There are a few cracks in the top of the dashboard so the previous owner installed the dash pad to prevent any more cracking. The real sheepskin seat inserts were a factory option and are quite common. How about that 160mph speedometer!
	Yes, there really is a back seat! (57K). Not much legroom back there, though. (Photo by M. Frankford)
	Here is the left side of the engine compartment (304K). The original Carter carburettor and intake manifold have been replaced by Edelbrock components. The Moroso air cleaner is not original either. Those Jensen valve covers are worth their weight in gold, if damaged they are difficult/expensive to replace. "Fire up the willing engine, responding with a roar!"
	Here is the right side of the engine compartment (80K). Brute force has an elegance all its own! (Photo by M. Frankford)
	This is the rear hatch area (69K). There is quite a bit of storage space. This is a touring car after all. The spare tire is mounted up under the car, so no interior room is lost. Note the fire extinguisher mounted on the side. The fire extinguisher doubles as an emergency tire inflator, it has a fitting for the air valve on the tire. (Photo by M. Frankford)
	This is your most likely view of the Highway Star! (50K; photo by Mark Reavis) See you in my rearview mirror!

Click here for even more pictures.

Click here for the Highway Star maintenance/repair history.

My car was featured in May 2001 issue of the Tennessee Valley Mopar Club newsletter. Click here to see the article as it appeared in the newsletter. Click here to see the article I originally submitted. I got carried away and submitted a 4-page article. The newsletter editor came back and said it had to be cut down to one page.

Tech tips

Tech tips & tricks occasionally added here as I run across them.

Cheap cure for Interceptor rear spring sag. On a related note is Dave Martin's tool to remove and replace the rear springs safely.

Frank Schwartz on the Jensen e-mail list has collected an extremely useful document of technical tips that have come across the list. With his permission these have been posted to the web for all to reference. Any updates Frank sends my way will be added to the web copy. This page is a bit large, about 100K, so it may take some time to load.

Here's a nifty cross-reference of various Jensen parts to parts used by other carmakers.

Rich Caires sent me this tech tip about replacement radiator fans for the late Interceptors with 3 fans.

David Ballantine has put together this very useful list of the fuse locations in the Int III.

Here's a list of the fan belts used on Interceptors.

A nice picture of the Interceptor/CV8 kingpins & associated parts, far better than the one in the Jensen manual. Thanks to SteveF for the link.

Here's some information about tire sizes and speedometer drive gears.

Seeing as how my internet service provider is HiWaay Information Services, I guess that makes me a HiWaay star also!

Here's a mention of an Interceptor in the movie "The Road Warrior" (91K). Alas, it's not in reference to a Jensen Interceptor, but instead an Australian Ford Falcon police car. If you see what they do to the car in the movie, it's just as well it's not a Jensen! It's a cool quote nonetheless, and definitely applies to the Jensen Interceptor.

The rock group Transatlantic sings about me on their Bridge Across Forever CD, in the song 'Duel With The Devil, Part 1: Motherless Children:'
"Will you ride off in the distance like some highway star?"
Is that not the epitome of coolness! You'd think they'd at least have the courtesy to thank me in the credits, though. Ingrates... :^) Click here for the MP3 sound clip.

There is a picture of an Interceptor in Webster's New World Dictionary Second College Edition. Thanks to Chris Pyne for the scans!

This is the first time I've heard the word "Jensen" as slang for the male organ; usually it's a "Johnson." Thanks to Nigel H. for the file.

Occasionally on the Jensen email list you will see references to and messages from a guy named "Ocker." Ocker is an Australian, and definitely a wild and crazy guy. Here are some links to information about Ocker:
Ocker's web site
Richard Calver's tribute to Ocker

And now a bit of Jensen humor:

Justifiably, Engine Needs Service Every Night

But that really applies more to Jensen-Healeys than Interceptors. :^)

Jensen web links

Jensen-cars mailing list

Jensen factory technical bulletins, courtesy of Paul Norton

Want to join the Jensen Motors WebRing?

Jensen Motors WebRing site is provided by the JIOC. Questions? Keri Meyer.

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