During the late 1930s Jock Horsfall became a familiar and popular competitor at British and European motor races, more often driving his Aston Martin 2-litre Speed Model, nicknamed the ‘Black Car’.
Driving the ‘Black Car’ Horsfall won the 1938 Leinster Trophy race at Brooklands. In the same year he took victory in the 2-litre class, and finished second overall, in the RAC Tourist Trophy race at Donington Park, beating the BMW works cars.
During the Second World War, Horsfall was employed as a specialist driver for Naval Intelligence. During that time, he delivered a corpse to a submarine for 'Operation Mincemeat', in which Ian Fleming also played a part. This was a famous and successful disinformation plot to convince the Germans that the Allies planned to land in Greece rather than Italy, and was featured in the film The Man Who Never Was.
On his return to the track after the War, Horsfall drove the ‘Black Car’ to victory in the 1946 Belgian Sports Car Grand Prix. In 1948, he and co-driver Leslie Johnson won the Spa 24 Hours race, sharing a prototype Aston Martin 2-Litre sports car known as the ‘Blue Car’. Horsfall had helped develop this car with Claude Hill. On his various test runs in the early hours of the morning, Claude Hill often joined him to learn more about the car and speed up development. They were both hardy chaps and often covered 200 miles on a test run in the freezing cold.
Jock was very helpful to AMOC Members at the time, often writing individual letters of advice and helping procure scarce bits and pieces. At the end of 1948 Jock severed his connection with Aston Martin and went on to form his own racing team.
Sadly he was killed in an accident whilst driving an ERA racing car in the 1949 BRDC International Trophy race at Silverstone.
Dudley Coram came up with the idea that the trophy should be a scale model of the ‘Black Car’.
It was the Horsfall family, led by Jock’s elder brother Geoffrey, who provided the means for the trophy to be executed by the master at the time, Rex Hayes. It took Rex Hayes 12 months to complete and originally came in a plate glass gunmetal framed case. The problem with this is it took two people to lift it! Not such a good idea if it’s a distinguished lady that has to present it. John Wyer came to the rescue and made a lightweight Perspex cover that made presentation by one person possible.