Jane & Max Weitzmann

The Weitzmann collection includes
a Jaguar XJ220, Lamborghini Miura,
Triumph Fury, Messerschmitt KR200,
Vanwall recreation, Iso Grifo,
and Aston Martin Lagonda
‘Our one-in,
one-out policy hasn’t
been entirely successful...
This mother and son team choose with their hearts and sell
with great difficulty. The result is a brilliantly eclectic collection
Words Martin Gurdon Photography LAURENS PARSONS

[Jane & Max Weitzmann]
Jane Weitzmann and her son Max are drinking coffee
in Jane’s kitchen, discussing their favourite cars,
when she says, ‘I had wondered about converting all
the downstairs rooms into garage space and moving
upstairs.’ Max isn’t surprised – he’s clearly used to
his mother’s dedication to an extraordinarily mixed
collection of cars, ranging from the sublime and
super-valuable Lamborghini Miura S to an Isetta
bubble car and a tiny Honda N600 Hondamatic.
In 1996 Jane and her late husband Henry bought the
Hertfordshire home I’m now visiting predominantly
because it was car-friendly. She guides me outside
to a courtyard flanked by an array of garages linked
in an L-shape. We walk past the covered hardstanding that
shelters the BMW Isetta and find more buildings containing a
workshop and further garaging. With storage for 27 cars this
is an enthusiast’s equivalent of Disneyland, but it started with
an NG kit car built by Henry in the late Eighties, followed by the
Jaguar XJ-based Ronart W152.
When the Weitzmanns first began collecting cars, financed by
their family-owned property business, Jaguars dominated.
‘I’m a career car nut, and my husband Henry and I had a
common love of cars. By this time we had a Datsun 240ZG and a
Jaguar XJS, but we wanted more, so we moved here,’ says Jane.
‘Initially there was a car port and a triple garage,’ Max adds, ‘but
my father quickly extended that to provide another five garages,
followed in 2001 by another garage with room for four. Since then,
various bits of the garden have been turned into hardstanding to
provide more space. We also moved the
gate inwards from the main road by a
car length so we can drive in off the road
safely before getting out of the car to
open it, as well as putting in a hard mesh
underneath the grass to make sure it
doesn’t get churned up when being driven
over after rain.’
Max has happy childhood memories of being ‘dragged around’
classic car shows and car-themed European holidays in their
various cars, including a Jaguar 420G. It isn’t Jaguar’s best-loved
creation but Jane had one because she liked the shape. ‘Actually,
I like big cars,’ she says. ‘As you’ve probably noticed,’ smiles Max.
As we stand in the courtyard, with a tiny Messerschmitt
KR200 to the right and a Jaguar XJ220 to our left, I admit that I’m
struggling to spot a theme – but Jane is quick to offer me one. ‘I
like anything rare and quirky.’
It was later owned by Bernie Ecclestone during the Eighties.
This one caught fire, not entirely unheard-of with Miuras, during
the early Nineties before the Weitzmanns bought it.
‘If there’s a fuel line fault, the hot engine gets sprayed with
petrol – but that’s not actually what happened with this one,’
explains Jane. ‘It was parked in a garage when something else in
there caught light. I believe the repair bill was between £180,000
and £200,000.’
After too much low-speed posing, the Miura needed re-tuning.
Max isn’t surprised. ‘I’ve driven it in London a couple of times but
it really doesn’t enjoy sitting in traffic, and you have to watch out
for people who slam the brakes on right in front of you just to get a
photo,’ he says.
Triumph Fury
To show me something more user-friendly Jane turns to a powderblue
roadster with ‘Triumph’ spelled out in chrome letters across
its nose. It looks a little like an overgrown Spitfire, but in fact it’s
a one-off prototype, styled by Giovanni Michelotti and created to
trial moncoque construction for the Canley marque.
It was the Spitfire resemblance that attracted Jane when she saw
it for sale at the Bonhams Goodwood Revival auction in 2009; they
bought it via private treaty.
‘My very first car was a primrose yellow Spitfire, which I adored.
I thought I’d be disappointed if I had another,’ she says. ‘But this
looked like a grown-up Spitfire. We thought it looked gorgeous.’
Like all the Weitzmanns’ cars, it gets regular, serious use. In fact,
the rapid, torquey sports tourer uses running gear from the 2000
‘I spent most of my youth looking
forward to driving the Miura’
saloon, including its 2.0-litre straight-six engine, and has been
used on a 1000-mile European trip. Beyond items like the sump
gasket and a throttle cable needing replacement, it’s proved strong
and reliable in our ownership.
‘We both agree that it’s wonderful to drive,’ says Jane. ‘That’s
important. Any car we don’t enjoy driving gets sold.’ Fast nightdriving
is not the Fury’s forte, however. ‘The pop-up lights are
vacuum-operated, so as you accelerate they start to droop. You
have to back off to see where you’re going.’
Jane bought the Triumph Fury for
the shape. ‘It’s a grown-up Spitfire’
maintenance by numbers
Local mechanic Bernard Eamer has
looked after the collection for 35
years. Each year he has to:
Change 150 litres of coolant
Replace 38 oil filters
Buy 200 litres of oil
Spend 76 hours giving them
routine checkovers, on top of
annual servicing
Make 38 trips to the local MoT
testing station
Replace the rubber hoses and
seals on a fifth of the collection
Change a ‘few’ handbrake cables,
bulbs, wheel bearings and more
Max and the Miura – it’s
the one car he and his
mother would never sell
Lamborghini Miura S
Henry Weitzmann’s predilections were more minimalist, and his
taste lives on in the microcars. Although, according to Max, his
father’s favourite car was the lime green Miura S behind us. After
being diagnosed with cancer in 2000, Henry sold some shares and
bought his fantasy car.
‘Like most kids who were into cars, he had posters on his
bedroom wall, and the Miura was his dream. He achieved his
dream of owning one,’ says Jane.
‘I spent most of my youth looking forward to being able to drive
it,’ adds Max.
Jane explains that part of its appeal is an interesting back-story.
‘Twiggy’s manager, Justin de Villeneuve, bought it when it was
fairly new. He’s the first documented owner.
‘He’d often drive it along the King’s Road in London and, if you
see a photograph of Twiggy in or on a Miura, it’s this very car.’
In the Sixties it was white and left-hand drive and started
life as a P400. In the ownership of de Villeneuve – born the far
more prosaic-sounding Nigel Davies – the car was dispatched to
Lamborghini’s Saint’Agata factory, where it was upgraded to S
specification, which added 20bhp and some cosmetic changes.
Messerschmitt KR200
‘It doesn’t have to be fast but it needs to be fun,’ is a family mantra.
The Messerschmitt KR200, with its fighter plane-style canopy and
tandem driving position, makes that point vividly. Jane and Max
seem captivated by the extreme utility of this and their BMW Isetta.
Despite the Isetta’s vague steering and strange weight
distribution – it’s conceived for left-hand drive, but in this one
you sit on the same side as the single-cylinder 300cc engine –
Max enjoys driving it. Jane is more taken by the Messerschmitt
and specially fabricated single-wheel trailer, although after one
motorway trip she vowed to stick to minor roads.
‘It’s so light I was almost blown on to the hard shoulder and up
the grass verge by the trucks.’
In 2010 the Weitzmanns became the car’s third owners; its
first hung on to it for 35 years. It was then bought by a UK-based
German Embassy employee who’d done a lot of re-commissioning
work, although lack of use meant it needed a lot more.
‘The owners’ club has a massive amount of spares – new
canopies, everything,’ says Jane, who loves this microcar’s
singular eccentricity. ‘To reverse, you depress the key and it starts
the engine spinning backwards. So you have four reverse gears.’
Miura was previously
owned by Bernie
Ecclestone. It’s not
clear how he saw
over the wheel
It’s not all sportscar grunt. Here
Jane samples the Messerschmitt’s
charms; note the matching trailer
18 19

It took max a while –
and a listen – to warm to
the Jaguar XJ220’s appeal
XJ220 had just 400
miles when they bought it
Jane and Max bought their Iso Grifo
sight-unseen in 2002. Fortunately
it turned out to be ‘glorious’
the collection in full
AC 428 Frua
Amphicar
Aston Martin Lagonda
Radford Mini
BMW Isetta
BMW Grinnall trike
Boss Hoss 57 Chevy trike
Carver One
Daihatsu Copen
Datsun 240ZG
DeLorean DMC12
Ferrari 365 GTC/4
Fiat Gamine
Ford F150 Lightning
Honda N600 Hondamatic
Honda monkey bike
Lexus Hybrid GS450h
Mini Hustler 6
Mini (1989 Radford)
Iso Grifo
Jaguar E-type 3.8 FHC
Jaguar XJ13 replica
Jaguar XJ220
Lamborghini LM002 4x4
Lamborghini Miura S
Mazda Cosmo
Mazda Luce R130 coupé
Mercedes SLK55
Messerschmitt KR200
Mini Moke
Nissan Cube
Ronart W152
Suzuki LF50
Toyota 2000GT
Toyota Landcruiser
Triumph Fury
Ferrari V12 Vanwall replica
‘Cars whose dynamics don’t match their looks are
soon sold on. Our DB6 was a huge disappointment’
Jaguar XJ220
The Messerschmitt is dwarfed by the menacing form of the XJ220.
This car is more Jane’s thing than Max’s, although when the pair
first heard it being started from cold they were very nearly put off.
‘I thought it sounded dreadful,’ says Jane. ‘Like an old diesel,’
adds Max. Warmed and opened up, the twin-turbocharged V6
powering the most spectacular road car in Jaguar’s CV no longer
sounded like a very expensive bag of nails. ‘It made a gorgeous
noise,’ recalls Jane, ‘I was sold.’
Their XJ220’s history is typical of a model conceived before
the early Nineties’ financial crash but launched in the teeth of it,
when droves of suddenly poor customers cancelled their deposits.
XJ220s plunged in value and most ended up barely turning a
wheel. This one sat in an Irish showroom for a couple of years,
and was eventually bought by a local multi-millionaire who
parked it in a hangar next to his helicopter. His chauffeur would
occasionally take it out for a run, which explains the 400 miles on
the clock when the Weitzmanns took the keys in 2008.
They had the car recommissioned with new oil seals, fuel
lines and collapsible, honeycomb fuel bag, whose location just
behind the passenger cell gives Max pause for thought. Jane is
undeterred. ‘There are no driver aids,’ she says. ‘It’s down to you.
Get it wrong and the car will bite.’
Max isn’t keen. ‘It sounds interesting when it gets going and
it handles okay, although there are other cars that are better. My
mother likes it, but I’m not overly fussed.’
Cars whose dynamics don’t match their looks are quickly sold
on. ‘My husband bought a DB6 Volante for my 50th birthday, but it
was a huge disappointment. It didn’t handle very well,’ says Jane.
Iso Grifo
Surely the Iso Grifo – sat between a Vanwall and an Aston Martin
Lagonda – is a contradiction? ‘I love the Iso. It’s one of my
favourites to drive and I don’t know why,’ says Jane. ‘The gearstick
is positioned for left-hand drive, so it’s a long stretch. I suppose
I’m the right shape, and it’s glorious.’
This was Iso’s 1968 London Motor Show car, and has a celebrity
backside connection, because John Lennon sat in it at the show.
The Weitzmanns bought it in 2002. ‘It looked fab and drove
beautifully,’ she says. ‘The interior is original, and the car had been
resprayed. So when the roof paint began cracking this spelled
trouble. The chassis sidewalls had rotted away, so she was flexing.
We had a large chunk of metal welded into the chassis and the car
is perfect again.’
The plans don’t stop there. Says Max, ‘One idea is for a
car storage facility/museum, where owners could store their
vehicles and work on them, but this is still a pipe dream. We’re
restructuring at the moment. I’ve been after an Ariel Atom for a
while and my mother is keen on a GT40.’
You get the impression that the Weitzmanns are never happier
than when making an acquisition – even if it does mean parting
with another car to make room.
20