Biography|Linda Jackson — Born in This Motor City, Not Beside a Plant Gate

People treat a later Citroën and Peugeot chief as someone who must have grown up next to a factory clock.

Linda Jackson was born in 1959 in Coventry, in the West Midlands.

English and French biographical notices agree on the city and the year. They do not publish a day.

The civil record belongs to this town.

The family house is not a public site, and this pin does not pretend otherwise.

Stand instead at the civic place that now holds the city's motor memory: Coventry Transport Museum, on Millennium Place, Hales Street.

The museum opened in 1980, two decades after her birth. It is here because Coventry was the British car city — Jaguar, Triumph, Standard, Humber, Alvis, and the rest.

She grew up in that city while the plants still employed the street.

Later profiles call her Coventry-born and Coventry-raised.

Automotive News in 2016 listed the birthplace as Coventry, England. The French Wikipedia notice says the same.

She has said she was not a car child. An uncle who worked at Jaguar is the relative who later opened a gate.

A visitor who wants the childhood street will not find it marked. What is marked is the industry that employed the street.

That is the honest origin: a year, a city, and a public hall that explains why the city mattered.

Photo: Elliott Brown, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Alexander Migl, CC BY-SA 4.0, Paris Motor Show 2018.