69 Gilbert “Gil” Jepson: Communication With Mike Chapman: 2022 Mike Knapman of the Allard Owners Club in the UK has been corresponding with us and helped us better understand the Allard Clipper as well as put us in contact with the cars history and ownership. In the e-mail below, he speaks about Gil Jepson who was the engineer behind much of the chassis design of the Allard Clipper. His memory of Gil’s thoughts about his project—the Allard Clipper—are shared below. E-mail From Mike Knapman on 1/14/2022 Geoffrey Thank you for the link to your article about Magaret Woolsey which is very interesting. I will forward it to David Hooper who was an apprentice at Allard and later became Chief Engineer and Chief Designer at Allard. In your article you mention Gil Jepson. I got to know Gil quite well in his later years and believed his role at Allard was as a "production engineer", i.e. turning the Drawing Office designs into produceable products. He was an apprentice at Adlards (the original company which became one of the biggest Ford Main Dealers in London) before WWII. During the war he worked for a company making instruments. Gil told me the Clipper was not all bad. In fact it went quite well and one day he used it for a long trip to the Midlands to collect some parts that had been made for Allard by a factory there. Reference the photo of the Clipper and the team lined up behind it. In your article you name the eight team members whereas there are nine in the photo. Perhaps the man on the right is Gottlieb? Would you like a copy of the original registration document (log book)? Jeremey Bennett is willing to send you it. Best wishes, Mike Knapman Gil Jepson apprenticed at “Adlards” before World War II—so close in spelling to “Allard”
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