About Jensen
Jensen Motors, Ltd was a British manufacturer of sports cars and commercial vehicles, based in West Bromwich (in the West Midlands west of Birmingham).
Foundation
Jensen began as a small coachbuilding firm run by brothers Richard and Alan Jensen; they bought out the body works of W.J. Smiths & Sons where they worked after the owner's death and renamed it Jensen Motors in 1934. They built exclusive customised bodies for standard cars produced by several manufacturers of the day including Morris, Singer, Standard, and Wolseley. In 1934 they were commissioned by American film actor Clark Gable to design and build a car for him based on a Ford V-8 chassis. The resultant car won them much acclaim and stimulated huge interest in their work including a deal with Ford to produce a run of Jensen-Fords with Jensen bodywork on a Ford chassis. In 1934 they also started to design their first true production car under the name White Lady. This evolved into the Jensen S-type which went into production in 1935.
Commercial vehicles
In the late 1930s Jensen diversified into the production of commercial vehicles under the marque JNSN, including the manufacture of a series of innovotive lightweight trucks, built with aluminium alloys, for the Reynolds Tube Company and the prototype for the articulated Jen-Tug which went into production in the late 1940s.
During World War II Jensen concentrated on the war effort and produced components for military vehicles including the turrets for tanks, and on the production of specialised ambulances and fire-engines.
