Jensen FF: the first four-wheel-drive production car (1966–1971)

The Jensen FF looks, at a glance, like an Interceptor. It is not. Beneath the familiar Italian-styled body sat a four-wheel-drive system and anti-lock brakes, both years ahead of the rest of the industry, and that makes the FF one of the most significant cars Britain built in the 1960s. It is the engineer’s Jensen.

Ferguson Formula: four-wheel drive on the road

The FF takes its name from the Ferguson Formula, the four-wheel-drive system developed by Harry Ferguson Research, the company founded by the tractor pioneer. Putting drive to all four wheels was nothing new on farm and military vehicles, but doing it on a fast, road-going grand tourer was, and the FF is widely regarded as the first four-wheel-drive production car built for the road.

The point was traction and safety, not off-roading. With a heavy Chrysler V8 sending its power through all four wheels, the FF could put its performance down in the wet and the cold in a way a rear-drive Interceptor could not, decades before four-wheel drive became expected on powerful cars.

The first car with anti-lock brakes

The FF went further still. It was the first production car fitted with anti-lock brakes, using the Dunlop Maxaret system, a technology that had come from aircraft. In an era when a hard stop in a powerful car could end in locked wheels and a spin, an anti-lock system on a road car was extraordinary, and it underlines how much of the FF was about engineering ambition rather than show.

How the hardware actually works

The engineering rewards a closer look. The Ferguson system split the V8’s torque permanently between the axles, biased toward the rear so the car steered and felt like a conventional grand tourer, with a central differential and one-way clutches managing the difference in speeds between front and rear. Nothing needed selecting and nothing could be got wrong by the driver: the security was simply always on, which was precisely the philosophy. The Maxaret anti-lock system worked mechanically from the transmission rather than at each wheel, crude by later standards but genuinely effective at preventing the locked-wheel slides that caught out powerful cars of the day. Period road testers, invited to brake and swerve on wet test tracks, wrote astonished copy about both systems, and the FF collected rave reviews that its price then quietly smothered in the showroom.

Telling an FF from an Interceptor

The two cars share a body, but the FF gives itself away. To make room for the four-wheel-drive transmission the FF is about four inches longer in the wheelbase, with a longer front, and the giveaway detail is the pair of air vents on each front wing where the Interceptor wears only one. Inside and in profile they are close cousins; in the details they are distinct, and knowing the tell is the first step to confirming a genuine car.

Why so few were built

The FF was brilliant and barely viable. It cost far more than the Interceptor it was based on, and the four-wheel-drive layout could not readily be converted to left-hand drive, which locked it out of the United States and the volume the company needed. Only around 320 were made between 1966 and 1971 before Jensen quietly dropped it, and the industry then took another decade to catch up: not until quattro-era rallying made four-wheel drive fashionable did the rest of the motoring world arrive where West Bromwich had already been. What was a commercial problem then is the FF’s making now: it is rare, historic and prized precisely for being so far ahead of its time.

Owning a Jensen FF

Live with an FF and most of it is Interceptor: the same relaxed, torquey V8 character, the same comfort, the same big-car presence. The difference is the extra security of four driven wheels and the knowledge of what the car represents. The same rust and ownership notes apply as for any Interceptor, set out in full on that page, and the same buying rule follows: the shell and the history matter far more than the mileage.

The one real caveat is the specialised hardware. The Ferguson Formula transmission and the Maxaret brakes need knowledgeable care and the parts are scarcer, so a sound FF with continuous history and a specialist behind it is worth holding out for.

Value and rarity

The FF sits above the Interceptor in value, on rarity and history alike. Usable cars start around £40,000, good ones run roughly £60,000 to £110,000, and the best go beyond, with genuine, correct, well-documented cars commanding the premium. It is the connoisseur’s choice in the Jensen range and a landmark in the wider story of British engineering. For the era, see British classic cars of the 1960s.

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