“He actually changed the gear lever and accelerator pedal because he was only 5ft tall – but I had to put those back to the original specification as I’m 6ft!”

“There’s a ‘Jenks’ brake meter on the glove box cover, the sunroof is still there,” comments Barrie. “I think Tom’s struck quite a nice balance between preserving the car as it would have looked in period, but also prepping it for contemporary historic racing.”

Well, almost. Jenks wasn’t afraid to rough-up his 356 at the time, but Pead has made sure that’s all been (largely) smoothed out.

“In period Jenks was pretty hard on the car,” he says. “Pretty much every panel was bashed in.

“So we found all the original bits that he wrote about. I didn’t want to start losing all the history [so as a result] you can still see some of the marks on it.”

In fact, Jenks lists so many issues with his car in his Porsche 356 book – as a result of running it so hard – it’s a wonder it’s still around today.

“After using the car for some 30,000 miles (48,000 km) of European touring I began to use it for competition purposes, in club events at sprints and hillclimbs, with the 6 Hour Relay Race and a 500-kilometre rally on the Nürburgring thrown in for good measure,” the writer recalled.

“It is difficult to say whether the car was driven harder in competitions than it was on the roads of France, Italy and Sicily. Certainly I reached the limit of its road-holding (i.e. spinning gracefully) in the mountains of Calabria as well as at Silverstone.”

The writer’s most notorious appearance in the 356 came at that above-mentioned Six-Hour Silverstone relay in 1958 – one that would be won by the Speedwell team’s Austin A35, the victorious line-up featuring one Graham Hill.

“Jenkinson, this year with 1600 Super engine in his Porsche, had hit a drum, done some ploughing and spun at Woodcote in upholding Porsche honour,” commented then-editor Bill Boddy on our hero’s mid-race progress.

Jenks would trade in the 356 for an E-Type in 1962, the Porsche changing hands several times before finding its way to Pead.

He purchased the car for £40k, but estimates the restoration set him back a further £70k as well as taking 18 months. It really has been a labour of love for someone passionate about Porsches, Motor Sport and the writing of Jenks.

“The guy I bought it off had started trying to restore it,” Pead says. “It was unfortunate – he was a welder by trade, he made metal gates, and it showed in the work! The car was an absolute mess.

“It was complete and sort of driveable, but [aesthetically] appalling.

“But on the plus side, it had the original engine, gearbox, apart from some rusty bits of bodywork the previous owner had tried to weld on.

“Took about 18 months to restore – it wasn’t a quick way of doing it.

“Apart from the bodywork, I did everything – every single part cleaned, polished, sanded, and I tried not to replace anything I didn’t need to. All the paintwork on the dashboard, the steering wheel, it’s all original.”

The car made its racing return at last year’s Members’ Meeting, an experience Pead describes as “worrying”, but the 356 held together.

Then, with the owner entering the Clark car at this year’s Members’ Meeting’s Fordwater Trophy, he asked historic racing veteran Barrie to take on the Jenks machine.

As Jenks describes in detail in his own writing, Barrie confirms the car was partial to a bit of oversteer on the sole practice session in the car.

“Before I made the choice of a Porsche I had to suffer a great deal of barracking with remarks such as ‘My God, the oversteer,’ or ‘They are impossible in the wet,’ ‘It will spin as soon as you see a corner,’” wrote Jenks.

“I put up with all these because I thought the aerodynamic shape of the saloon looked about right and it was a car I could lean my elbow on (my friends mutter rude things to me about dwarfs when I discuss heights!).”

“It was a wee bit nervous, particularly at the front end,” says Barrie of his first drive. “So we’d be wandering around the track a little bit, turning in really quite aggressively. After the test the guys dialled some of that out, which I was thankful for in the wet conditions on race day!

“The brakes needed a lot of heat on the route to the grid. I was trying to get the shoes settled in the drums and get rid of residual moisture that was in there – they were a bit snatchy at first, but when they’re working they’re great.

“They’re slightly bigger than in period, Jenks may have fitted those himself.”

A long first gear caused Barrie to tumble down the order from the standing start, but he fought back to come home fourth in the 28-car entry.

It was the perfect race for a car which facilitated Jenks’ fine documentation of motor sport history. Something Pead and Barrie are keenly aware of.

“The provenance of the car is amazing, with stories and pictures of it from all over Europe,” says Pead. “Pictures of Stirling Moss in it, it being used as a run around – and of course he wrote lots of stories and anecdotes about the car.

“I felt the Jim Clark car was the important 356, certainly in Europe, and the Jenks car was equal to that”

“I felt the Jim Clark car was the important 356, certainly in Europe, and the Jenks car was equal to that – so thought I’d be greedy and have both! And to keep them both in the UK, which was equally as important.”

“There’s something about those cars,” adds Barrie. “It’s the aesthetic, it’s the engineering, even down to the noises they make, the driving position, just the small details too. They are great, great examples of engineering.

“I think when you look at it, it’s just a fabulous shape – it’s unthreatening. You see one on the road, it almost looks like a UFO, quite unlike a modern car.

“So even people who don’t particularly like cars that much, I find, can warm to the shape, the look, of a 356.

“It’s not the fastest thing on four wheels. But if you did want, as Jenks did, to criss-cross Europe for miles and miles, that thing stands a very good chance of getting you to where you’re going.”

Many thanks to Tom Pead, Robert Barrie and David Thomas Motoring Books for their help with this article.