Walter Hassan was born in London in 1905 and started at 15 as a shop boy at W. O. Bentley’s newly founded Bentley Motors, employee No. 14. He rose to riding mechanic and worked with Woolf Barnato, and after Rolls-Royce took over Bentley in 1931 he built the Barnato Hassan racing car at Brooklands. He then worked for Raymond Mays at ERA in Bourne, Lincolnshire, on engine development.
In 1938 he joined SS Cars, later Jaguar, at Coventry. After war work at the Bristol Engine Company he returned to Coventry to work with Bill Heynes on the XK engine, which stayed in production, in various sizes, from 1948 until 1992, and powered the winning car at Le Mans in 1951, 1953, 1955, 1956 and 1957.
In 1950 he joined Harry Mundy at Coventry Climax, where they designed the FW series lightweight overhead-cam engine, first meant for fire pumps and then developed for racing, and used in the Lotus Elite. When Jaguar bought Coventry Climax in 1963 he returned to develop the Jaguar V12 with Heynes and Claude Baily, an engine that later won Le Mans in the XJR-9 (1988) and XJR-12 (1990). He retired in 1972, was awarded the OBE, and died at Easenhall, Warwickshire, in 1996.
