BRADFORD'S FINEST

Think of revolutionary, post-WW2 cars from Britain, and one small thought immediately comes to mind – the 1959 Mini. But 12 years before the country’s most famous car was launched came another quietly brilliant, rule-bending machine.
Like the Mini, that car would win silverware in the Monte Carlo rally, it would demonstrate that fast, family car cornering needn’t be a torrid affair and – wait for it – it was the first British car to have a curved windscreen. And again like the Mini, its design was largely the work of one man.
That car was the 1947 Javelin. Compared to most of the warmed-over, upright, separately mudguarded pre-war throwbacks that most British car-makers were building in the late 1940s, the Javelin was a peek into a brighter future. Its origin was as much a surprise as its streamlined silhouette, the Javelin made by the Yorkshire-based Jowett company.