STARTING IN 1951, with an emphatic victory in the Le Mans 24 Hour race, Jaguar became a successful participant in motor sport. With specialised sports cars, then with racing saloons, and for a time with dedicated Formula One cars, the brand was usually present, and successful, at the very top level. The costs – of designing, building and campaigning cars – which were always high, eventually became astronomical, but in almost every case the results achieved seemed to make the expense worthwhile.
It all began with the XK120C, affectionately known as the ‘C-Type’ by its many followers, which started the trend of using as many Jaguar production-based components as possible. Though the body shape (by Malcolm Sayer) and the chassis design (by Bob Knight) of this two-seater were both special, much of what was hidden away had started life in the XK120 road car. With 200 bhp from the XK engine at the beginning, and with 220 bhp in maturity, the C-Type soon had disc brakes added to its chassis, and, with a 150-mph top speed, was good enough to win the Le Mans 24 Hour race twice, in 1951 and 1953.
Its successor was the legendary D-Type, which was beautifully shaped, more powerful (250 bhp, rising to more than 290 bhp with fuel injection in later years), smaller, lighter, and technically more complex. It had a potential top speed of 175 mph and won the Le Mans race in 1955, 1956 and 1957, also achieving great victories in endurance events at circuits such as Sebring in Florida. It became one of Jaguar’s great icons, still worshipped in the ‘classic’ movement, and commanding incredibly high prices when sold at auction.
It was typical that Sir William took every possible commercial advantage from these factory programmes, for he laid down rudimentary, but real, production lines at Browns Lane for each type, going on to sell more than fifty C-Types, more than seventy D-Types, and in 1957 they even sold eighteen of the super-exclusive XKSS, which was the trimmed and slightly civilised road-car version of the D-Type. More would undoubtedly have followed if the facilities had not been consumed in the fire of February 1957.
‘Lofty’ England (left) became Jaguar’s service manager in the 1950s, and also became the manager of the race team at that time. He is seen with Sir William Lyons.
Jaguar won the first of many Le Mans victories in 1951 with this C-Type, here seen streaming away from the start of the 24 Hour race.
Jaguar developed the D-Type as a racing sports car, which went on to win the Le Mans 24 Hour race in 1955, 1956 and 1957, along with many other races in many countries.
In the meantime, the company’s road cars not only began to record victory after victory in international rallies (Ian Appleyard’s XK120, NUB 120, was the most famous of all in Europe, but Ronnie Adams’s Mark VII victory in the Monte Carlo Rally of 1956 ran him close), but the saloons also won production car races wherever the regulations allowed them. At first, it was the big works Mark VIIs that outpaced the rest of the world; then the 3.8-litre Mark 2s took over, not only in the United Kingdom and United States, but in Europe and Australia too.
Ian Appleyard’s famous XK120, NUB 120, was the most distinguished of all Jaguar rally cars, and won many major events in three years.
From 1951 to the mid-1960s it seemed that no other make of car could beat them, and the Jaguar factory, notably the engine development areas, the service department managed by ‘Lofty’ England, and discreet little corners of the engineering offices, made sure that they were as fast and, most importantly, as reliable, as possible.
Although, as already described, the E-Type made its name and its reputation as a wonderfully charismatic road car, we must also remember that it originated in 1957 as a race-car project, when a small 2.4-litre two-seater seemed set fair to take over from the D-Types. Over time, though, and excepting a 1960 Le Mans entry for the E2A prototype, the E-Type was scarcely raced. Much-modified road cars shone on the circuits in 1961, and the extremely rare (thirteen cars built) ‘lightweights’ looked promising, but the company was never able to get back into motor racing in a big way.
There was, however, one serious (though clandestine) project in the mid-1960s, when the first of the big V12 engines (then with twin-cam heads per cylinder bank) was completed and installed in a mid-engined two-seater chassis, known as XJ13. If the potential cost of competing against Ferrari, Porsche and Ford had not become so horrendous, and if Jaguar had not become a part of British Leyland, where such programmes were then frowned on, this could have been a serious contender, for it not only looked splendid, but was capable of at least 200 mph. Only one car was built, and survives to this day, though several replicas have been constructed by wealthy private individuals in modern times.
As raced in the United States in the late 1970s, the Group 44 XJR5 greatly enhanced the model’s reputation.
Tom Walkinshaw’s TWR concern turned the XJ-S into a formidably successful ‘saloon’ car racer in the 1980s, winning the European Touring Car Championship before the team turned to specialised race cars.
There was then a lull until the mid-1970s, when British Leyland/Leyland Cars again decided to embrace motor sport and hired Broadspeed to develop massively powerful (600-bhp) versions of the XJ12C coupé for international saloon-car racing. Complete with their patriotic red, blue and white colour scheme, the cars looked magnificent in 1976 and 1977, but they were not quite quick enough to win major events.
Soon after this, attention turned to the V12-engined XJ-S, which was altogether smaller, lighter and potentially more suitable than the XJ12C. First in the United States, where Bob Tullius’s Group 44 cars won many races and championships, and then from 1982 in Europe, where Tom Walkinshaw’s TWR-prepared cars became the dominant cars in worldwide ‘touring car’ racing (because the XJ-S was just about a four-seater, it qualified as a ‘saloon’ – according to the regulations and the dimensions of the cabin), the XJ-S proved that it could win anywhere, in any circuit or weather conditions.
Not only was the XJ220 a stunning road car, but it was also a useful race car in events that suited its capacity and size.
The first of the ‘Silk Cut’ Jaguar successes at Le Mans came in 1988, when this XJR9 won in fine style.
In 1983 there were five victories in the European Touring Car Championship; then in 1984 a three-car team took the twelve-event championship outright, with Walkinshaw himself nominated as the winning driver. The V12 engine was powerful and reliable, the cars handled better than their size and bulk had ever originally promised, and it was only the arrival of yet more specialised Jaguar race cars – the XJR series – which made them obsolete.
Two separate mid-V12-engined racing sports car programmes dominated Jaguar’s sporting efforts for the rest of the 1980s, the American effort being led by Tullius’s Group 44 team, and the European effort by Walkinshaw’s TWR organisation. Except for one foray to the Le Mans 24 Hour race in 1985, the Group 44 effort was confined to North America.
XJR-5s and XJR-7s won many races from 1985 to 1987, but from 1988 TWR/Jaguar took over the North American programme, developing the XJR-9 GTP. This was swiftly supplanted by the XJR-10, which ran with a TWR turbocharged V6 engine that engineers had evolved from the MG Metro 6R4 rally car project (a much ‘productionised’ version of that engine would eventually be used in the XJ220 road car).
It was the World Championship programme, however, which made the most headlines. XJR6s established a successful dynasty in 1986, soon having 690 bhp from TWR-developed 6.5-litre versions of the V12, but it was the adoption of the lurid mauve-and-white livery of the Silk Cut cigarette sponsorship that made the latest XJR-8 cars (now with 7.0-litre/720-bhp engines) startling. Eight outright victories and the World Championship made them the dominant brand in sports-car racing, and this record was surpassed in 1988 when the team (now using XJR-9s) won the Le Mans 24 Hour race as well a second World Championship.
TWR won the prestigious Le Mans 24 Hour race for the second time in 1990, using this 720-bhp 7.0-litre V12-engined XJR12.
By 1990 the TWR race programme was so serious that they used turbo-V6 XJR-11s for most races, but reverted to a related XJR-12, complete with 7.0-litre Jaguar V12 engine, for Le Mans. It was an extremely wise decision (especially as a new owner, Ford, was paying all the bills for its new subsidiary), for two of the four team cars finished the race in first and second places, with Martin Brundle, John Neilsen and Price Cobb sharing the winning car. Again, this time with much help from Walkinshaw’s expert crew, Jaguar had demonstrated how good they could be in long-distance motor racing.
Four generations of specialised race or prototype supercars (from front to rear): the C-Type, the D-Type, the XJ13 prototype, and the mid-engined XJ220.
Nor was this the end – though it was for Jaguar-engined race cars. For 1991, in one last fling at the much changed World Sports Car Championship, TWR developed the new XJR-14, which was smaller and lighter, but just as effective as before. This time, because the regulations required it, the team had to use a smaller, normally aspirated engine. Accordingly Ford made it possible for 700-bhp 3.5-litre V8 Cosworth HBs (their current Formula One engine, as used in Benettons, for instance) to be available. Jaguar/TWR celebrated this by developing the dominant racing sports car of the year, and easily won yet another World Championship. It was a wonderful way to bring this programme to a close.
So-called ‘Jaguars’ appeared in Formula One in the early 2000s, but this was little more than a rebadging exercise for cars sponsored by Ford. Originally, there had been Stewart (after Jackie Stewart) F1 cars powered by Cosworth V10 engines; then Stewart had sold out to Ford, and suddenly, with publicity rather than engineering in mind, a ‘Jaguar’ F1 car was born. However, the cars, which were built and maintained in Milton Keynes, were not a short-term success, so that at the end of 2004 Ford sold the business to Red Bull.
The Jaguar brand appeared in Formula One for a few seasons in the 2000s, but these cars were built outside the factory and were powered by Ford-Cosworth V10 engines.