The long-nose Jaguar D-type, Chassis XKD 505 and carrying the Registration 774 RW, was the mount for Mike Hawthorn when winning at Le Mans in 1955, a story you can read in much detail here.

XKD 505 leading at Le Mans in 1955

Mike Hawthorn and Ivor Bueb celebrate after the win

XKD 505 in the pits at Le Mans prior to the race



XKD 505 winning at Le Mans in 1955...

The following extensive article on the development of the Jaguar D-Type is provided with permission by Paul Skilleter from his Book, 'Jaguar Sports Cars'. If you just want to read about the 1955 event without any background on the development and original history of the car that won it, then go to Le Mans 1955.

Background and overview
Like the C-type before it, the D-type Jaguar was built to win Le Mans. This it did three times, largely dominating the race for a span of four years, and casting its shadow over the event for maybe a couple of years after that - for although the D-type was first seen on the Sarthe circuit in 1954, a D-type victory was still possible as late as 1958 or even 1959.

It is therefore doubly ironic that Jaguar's own official team in this most famous of long distance races was dogged with consistent misfortune, and without the timely assistance of privately-entered Jaguars, the D-type's record at Le Mans would be far less impressive than it is. In 1954 the factory (and only) D-types were afflicted with fuel-feed problems and lost to Ferrari, and in 1956 two of the works cars crashed and the third was entirely put out of contention by a fault in its fuel injection system. Only in 1955 did a factory D-type win at Le Mans, and that victory was clouded by the disastrous Mercedes Benz accident in which about 85 people were killed. Ecurie Ecosse saved the day in 1956, and when Jaguar retired from racing, won again in 1957, a year in which the D-type utterly smashed the opposition to finish in the first four places.

The D-type's fortunes were even more mixed at other circuits, though it can be said that for a car designed purely to win Le Mans and for no other purpose whatsoever, the D-type Jaguar's record is extraordinary. Today it has an aura about it which few other cars possess, and it is remembered with respect - almost reverence - by those who drove it or saw it defeat all comers at Le Mans. Ecurie Ecosse ran their last D- type right up until 1960, long after it was fully competitive and for almost no other reason than nostalgia! Such was the character and magic of this greatest of British post-war sports racing cars.

1954 - A new sports car to test
The D-type had its origins in the experimental car which was first demonstrated to the world when the C-type was still representing Jaguar on the track. This car achieved a speed of 178.3 mph, but the biggest share of the publicity stemming from these October 1953 runs at Jabbeke quite rightly fell to the XK 120 Roadster which managed a surprising 172.4 mph on the same occasion. The prototype was a halfway stage between C- and D-types, the first example of Jaguar's new Le Mans contender being completed about March 1954.

Tony Rolt, winner of the Le Mans race with Duncan Hamilton in 1953 driving the C-type, was one of several drivers invited to try out the unpainted and unnamed new sports racing car at RAF Gaydon after it had secretly emerged from the experimental shop at Browns Lane. At the aerodrome, the car was put through an assortment of elementary braking and handling tests around barrels layed out on the super- long runways. There followed more serious testing at the Motor Industry Research Association's testing ground near Nuneaton, and at Silverstone, before a practice session was arranged on the actual Le Mans circuit, not very many weeks before the race itself.

This test session was not without drama - the D-type's clutch had to be changed after the journey out from England on the road, Peter Walker was late because he'd forgotten his passport, and by the time the car was actually on the circuit (closed for a rally), the period which had been allotted to Jaguar for practice had nearly expired. Disobeying the French officials' instructions Rolt took it upon himself to do three laps, not one, but the wrath so incurred was worthwhile enduring as the flying lap had been covered in 4 minutes 22.3 seconds, which was 5 seconds faster than Ascari's lap record! Rolt's impressions after that brief try-out was of a car greatly advanced over the C-type, with all trace of the latter's lightness at speed gone, and with much improved handling, braking and top speed - which was now nearer 180 mph than 150 mph.

There were many reasons for the new car's superiority over its predecessor, the C-type Jaguar, which had been the company's first attempt at building a sports racing car. The D-type was built on fundamentally different lines and had very little in common with the C-type, save that it too incorporated a surprising number of production parts in its make-up.

The monocoque
While the earlier car's construction did include a very small area of stressed panelling, it was basically built around a space frame. The D-type's main centre section was on the other hand almost entirely monocoque except for the intrusion of the frame members from the front tubular part of the car which carried the engine and front suspension. The central 'tub' of rivetted aluminium panelling was strengthened by internal sills which ran irom front to rear, and by bulkheads fore and aft - the rear bulkhead being completely double-skinned, with its inner wall following the contours of the driver's and passenger's seat backs; a transverse box-section member gave the front bulkhead its strength. The car's tail section was unstressed and just bolted on to the rear bulkhead.

Front suspension of the D-type was similar in principle to the road XK sports cars, having wide based wishbones top and bottom and being sprung by two longitudinal torsion bars, which were attached to the front of the lower wishbones but via an extension past the fulcrum point on the D-type. The car's ride height was altered by the use of a vernier scale adjuster at the torsion bars' rearward mounting points. Steering too was similar to the production cars, the rack and pinion design being essentially that used on the XK 140 when it was announced three or four months after the 1954 Le Mans, it first having been seen on the C-type of 1951.

Rear suspension owed a little to the C-type as well, springing being by a bottom transverse torsion bar anchored at its centre onto the rear bulkhead, and connected to the axle by a 1/4 inch thick steel-plate arm extending from each end to a bracket under the Salisbury axle. These two axle brackets extended an equidistance above the axle casing to meet two similar, but un- sprung arms with which they formed a true parallelogram. Rubber bushes were used on both inner and outer links, but the bottom arms were located in metal bearings fitted with grease nipples. Two telescopic shock absorbers (which also incorporated bump and rebound stops) provided the system's damping, one acting on each lower arm, and were angled sharply forwards and inwards to their mounting points on two upright box section members affixed to the bulkhead - which also took the suspension arms themselves. The axle was located transversely by an 'A' bracket pivoting near the bottom of these box section members, its nose attached to the axle tubes via a bearing and bracket.

This arrangement also served to determine the height of the rear roll centre.

Brakes
The D-type's brakes were the Dunlop system as developed on the C- type, largely purged of the various bugs which had afflicted them in the early days, thanks to Jaguar's racing and testing programme over the previous few years. It was still quite complex though, with three pairs of wheel cylinders and pads being used on each front disc, "in order to obtain what we thought was the necessary volume of lining to last 24 hours at racing speed" said Heynes. But it was eventually discovered that the third pad was wearing at least twice the rate of the first, because of the higher temperature it was running at, and later on a large single rectangular pad was used which had the advantage of being able to be replaced in almost seconds - or in not much longer than it took for the car to undergo a wheel change during a pit stop. Two pairs of wheel cylinders acted on the rear discs, plus independent calipers controlled by the single-cable handbrake. The discs themselves were 12 inches in diameter, and of chromium- plated (to reduce wear) mild steel. Airscoops were fitted to the front brake assembly for surer cooling.

A similar hydraulic servo system to that used on the C-type assisted driver braking effort, using pressure supplied by a Plessy pump driven from the propeller shaft at the back of the gearbox. A non-return valve prevented the entry of air into the system when the car was reversed, by short-circuiting the pump action.

Wear of the friction material and heat soak were only two of the problems encountered during the development of the brake, and another but less well known snag which had to be overcome was weight transfer, which had a great effect on the front to rear braking ratio needed. For instance, the static D-type had 1000 lbs of its weight on its front wheels and 930 lbs on its rear. Under maximum acceleration with a full tank this became 720 lbs front and 1467 lbs rear, and under maximum braking with an empty tank it was changed to 1270 lbs front and 660 lbs rear! Braking ratios were altered by the size of the individual wheel slave cylinders.

Gone were the C-type's very traditional wire wheels. The D-type used Dunlop wheels made of a light alloy with a steel centre section, of either 16 inch or 17 inch rim diameter and with a rim width in both cases of 5.4 inches. Although secured by familiar- looking three eared knock-on hub caps, these wheels were not mounted on splined hubs as before but were located by five domed pegs, which fitted into corresponding holes drilled in the back flange of the hub. Lighter than the wire wheels they replaced, these alloy wheels were also stronger and more durable, lessening the risk of wheel collapse.

The engine
While the D type's engine was still remarkably close to the production unit, there had been some marked advances. Dry-sump lubrication was introduced which had the effect of reducing the depth of the sump, which meant that the car's bonnet line and its centre of gravity could both be lowered; the engine was in fact some 2.75 inches lower in the chassis than was the case with the C- type. The designation 'dry sump' is of course something of a misnomer - oil still fell back into the sump after lubricating the bearings, but instead of the sump being used as a reservoir, the oil was immediately sucked up by a scavenge pump and delivered to a separate oil tank, where it 'de-frothed' and was pumped to the engine oilways by a pressure pump. Both pumps were driven via transverse shafts from a worm drive at the front of the crankshaft, and an oil cooler was inserted into the pressure circuit between pressure pump and block. Oil capacity was 28 pints, and another subsidiary advantage of the dry sump method was the elimination of oil surge during changes of acceleration, or on corners.

The D-type's cylinder head was based on the C-type casting which was now a common option on the XK 140 and Mk VII saloon in the road car range. To this was fitted larger inlet valves, of 1 7/8 inch diameter, although the exhaust valves were left the same size at 1 5/8 inch, as were the valve angles. A different camshaft was fitted having the same 3/8 inch lift as that on the production cars but giving a pronounced overlap, although the new camshaft sacrificed little at the lower end of the rev. range and virtually nothing on flexibility. The camshaft covers incorporated quite a complex system of breathers to make quite sure that any pressures built up could escape very easily.

The car's DCO3 45 mm Weber carburetters took their air from an intake duct which ran from the radiator grille to an open ended box around the carburetters' ram-tubes.

The exhaust manifolds were cast, each of the two sections taking the exhaust gases individually from every exhaust port in the usual Jaguar pattern, although the 'branch' effect was more marked than on the C-type engine. The two down-pipes ran through a side-mounted expansion box and ended in front of the inside front wheel. With a 9:1 compression ratio, approximately 245 bhp at 5750 rpm was produced from this engine.

The car's hydraulically operated 7 1/2 inch Borg & Beck triple plate clutch and the starter motor ring acted as a flywheel, helped by a substantial crankshaft damper mounted externally at the front of the engine. The gearbox was a completely new Jaguar-designed unit with the perhaps surprising addition of synchromesh on first gear, bottom being intended as a useful ratio for employing on very slow corners. On the Le Mans axle a 2.79:1 ratio was used with the intermediate gearing of 5.98 first, 4.58 second, and 3.57 third - top gear was direct as always. Reverse was 6.1:1. On top of the gearbox was mounted the starter motor, in front of the gear lever.

Cooling was by a Marston Excelsior light alloy radiator, the same firm making the upright oil cooler mounted along side; as on the ill-fated 1952 C-types, a separate alloy header tank was used to lower the overall height of the system. Moulded radiator hose was used, and the coolant capacity was 29 pints.

Jaguar continued to use the flexible bag tanks that they had introduced on the C-type; two were mounted in the car's tail, inside aluminium containers and supported by the usual multiple attachment points. The capacity was given as 36.2 gallons, and the filler cap was under a hinged section of the head-fairing. Twin electric petrol pumps mounted on the rear bulkhead supplied the carburetters through a common delivery pipe.

Sayer's Aerodynamics
The D-type's body design was the work of Malcolm Sayer, Jaguar's aerodynamicist, and was extremely effective. Its functional shape was distinctive and beautiful in an assertive manner, and the D-type has always looked as fast as it is. As with all Jaguar's sports racing cars, great attention was paid to streamlining, the bodies being very carefully developed using 1/1Oth scale models in a wind tunnel - a reduction in drag was not the overriding consideration either, as the effects of side winds and the alteration of the car's attitude through wind pressure were investigated too. "It is surprising how close the results obtained in the wind tunnel are reproduced when tests are carried out on the road," said Heynes in 1960; "in fact we now find it possible to predict, within 3-4%, the speed a sports car will achieve before it is built."

Needless to say, the D-type was extremely advanced aerodynamically when it appeared, and while it was rarely the most powerful car starting a Le Mans race, it was usually the quickest along the Mulsanne Straight. Like the monocoque centre section which itself formed the middle of the body, the detachable bonnet was made up of welded and rivetted alloy sections, and hinged forward. The similarly built detachable rear section which housed the fuel tanks featured a head-fairing only on the original prototype, a stabilising fin being rivetted onto the team cars a comparatively short while before the 1954 Le Mans race.

A semi wrap round windshield protected the driver, who was probably a little more comfortable than he had been in the C-type, installed behind the adjustable steering column and confronted with only three instruments - or about as many as a racingdriver can be relied upon to read accurately during a race. These were a revolution counter with a 'tell-tale' needle, an oil pressure gauge, and a water temperature gauge. The steering wheel itself had light alloy spokes (Hawthorn liked four) and a laminated wood rim.

A compact car, the D-type's wheelbase was 7 feet 6 inches, track 4 feet 2 inches front and 4 feet rear, and its overall length 12 feet 10 inches. Dry weight was a little over 18 cwt, or about 150 lbs lighter than the 1953 C-type, and frontal area was down from 13.8 sq.ft to 12.5 sq.ft.

1954 Le Mans
This then was Jaguar's challenger for the 1954 Le Mans race, and as the three cars were pushed to their places abutting the pit counters in readiness for the famous start procedure, they were already noted as favourites for an overall win - the deep impression made by the victorious C-type of the previous year had not been forgotten.

The race began under an overcast sky, and as the cars settled down to serious lappery, it began to rain. This didn't deter the D-type drivers - Stirling Moss/Peter Walker (OKV 2), Duncan Hamilton/Tony Rolt, (OKV 1) and Peter Whitehead/Ken Wharton (OKV 3) - as it probably hindered their chief rivals, the 4.9 litre Ferraris. Fast though they might be, the other big-engined runners were hardly to be in contention for the lead - Aston Martin, Talbot, Cunningham, Gordini and the new V12 Lagonda. Gonzales lead with his 4.9 Ferrari early in the race, hotly pursued by Moss who overhauled the Argentinian as the track became wetter, on the 21 st lap.

Then came a cruel blow - Rolt brought OKV 1 into the pits and complained of misfiring particularly along the Mulsanne Straight, and shortly afterwards the Jaguar mechanics had to listen to a similar report from the drivers of the other two D-types. Plugs were changed but that didn't effect a cure. After a number of stops fuel starvation was disgnosed, and traced to blocked filter elements which were found to be packed by a fine grey dust - too fine to have been stopped by the gauze filtering in the gravity refuelling tanks behind the pits.

The clogged filters were taken out of the system altogether - they were the paper element type usually used as oil filters, and had simply proved too efficient; to add a touch of irony to the situation, the D-type's actual lubrication system had no filters at all! After their removal, no more trouble was experienced - until Moss found he had inoperative brakes at the end of the Mulsanne Straight. A resort to the escape road and some frantic changing down avoided a catastrophe; but he and Walker were out of the race. Then Ken Wharton and Peter Whitehead lost most of their gears, and prolonged pulling at low revs in the D-type's very high top gear brought on cylinder head trouble which put them out too.

The Jaguar offensive looked like collapsing. Only Hamilton and Rolt soldiered on through atrocious conditions, whittling down the lead built up by Gonzales and Trintignant in the big red Ferrari with bitter determination. At 10.15 am the D-type was delayed yet again, when a Talbot forced Rolt partially off the road and he had to pit for minor repairs.

Then well past mid-day, Trintignant drew in for a routine stop; Gonzales, who took over, tried to restart the Ferrari - but the engine wouldn't fire. Huge panic in the Italian pit, great excitement in the Jaguar camp. Perhaps someone else was having the bad luck now. The rain was coming down again and Rolt pulled in, only a lap behind now, indicating that he wanted to exchange his goggles for a visor, not realising the great drama that was being enacted in the Ferrari pit.

Desperately he was waved on; he spotted the red car silent in the pits at the same instant and needed no second telling. The D-type hurtled off into the swirling rain, and still the Ferrari wouldn't start, even under the attentions of about twice the number of mechanics allowed by the regulations. It really began to seem that the Italian car had shot its bolt when suddenly the engine fired, picked up, and Gonzales was away, wheels spinning. Ninety seven seconds later Rolt came by. Almost blinded by spray but lapping incredibly quickly, he finally came in again for a visor. To save precious time the suitably equipped Hamilton was despatched to take up the chase as soon as Rolt vacated the driving seat. Duncan cast all caution to the winds as he tried to gain on the bigger engined car:

"How I tried... The gearing of our D type was such that we could pull 5,600 rpm in top gear on the straight. This corresponded to something just over 170 mph. I saw suddenly that the rev counter was reading 5,900 and realised that I was getting wheelspin at 170 mph in top gear. I eased my foot immediately for wheelspin can take charge when you cannot control it."

But Gonzales was "impossibly good" in the only Ferrari left running, and when the rain stopped and the track began to dry, he once again began to pull away from the Jaguar. Hamilton relaxed slightly and concentrated on finishing - which he did, just 105 seconds after the winning Ferrari, and with an unintentional flourish, slicing at around 150 mph between the three Bristols which had lined up across the track to finish in formation! A long way back was the 5.4 litre Cunningham of Johnston and Spear in third place, in front of the Belgian-entered C-type of Laurent and Swaters.

Defeat but an honourable one
But although the D-type had not won on its first race appearance, the 1954 expedition mounted by Coventry had been no disaster. Stirling Moss had set a new fastest speed down the Mulsanne Straight, the Omega recorders having clocked OKV 2 at 172.97 mph, and furthermore, if one adds up the amount of time spent in the pits by the Rolt/Hamilton Jaguar, it will be found that the D-type was stationary in the pits for at least five minutes longer than the Ferrari - including the latter's 7 1/2 minutes when it wouldn't start. So but for the fuel filter blockage, or Rolt's enforced pit stop after the minor shunt, who knows?

A defeat perhaps, but an honourable one.

Revenge at Rheims
Revenge was certainly taken at the Rheims 12 Hour race held the next month, where the D-type recorded its first win. The cars and drivers were exactly as for the 24 hour race in June, and after a brief lead by a Cunningham, it was Moss who circulated in front after the floodlit midnight start. Tony Rolt suffered an attack from Jean Behra's 3-litre Gordini which had tried desperately to keep up, finally ramming the D-type's tail. This effectively put the French car out of action but apart from a dent and a broken rear light it seemed that the Jaguar was not very much damaged. Rolt and Hamilton therefore took the lead when Moss dropped out with a broken prop-shaft, ahead of Whitehead and Wharton, and it looked like an easy run home until 30 minutes from the end of the race the back axle ran dry - a hole had been chafed in the casing by a piece of frame bent in the Gordini incident.

After a hasty repair with chewing gum, Hamilton took the car around for one more lap at 50 mph, listening to broken teeth grinding up the crownwheel and pinion, and then waited at the line for the 12 hours to come up, hobbling over to be classed as a finisher. Such had been OKV l's lead that the only car to complete more laps was the Whitehead/Wharton D-type - and Whitehead had been the first to win a race with the C-type too.

These three cars, which with OVC 501 as reserve had made up the factory's Le Mans team, actually had 'XKC' chassis numbers, the D-type designation not having been applied until after the 24 hour race (XKC 402, 403 and 404 for OKV 1, 2 and 3 respectively - OVC 501 was the first D-type built, chassis number XKC 401). Although the new competition car was colloquially referred to as the 'D- type' during its secret building and development, the fact is that pre-race press releases on the car, even those made during its public testing on the Le Mans circuit, never referred to it as such. So maybe Harold Hastings of The Motor is quite right when he claims to have coined the name while writing his Le Mans report - frustrated at having to keep calling it the "new competition Jaguar" as everybody else was doing.

The 1954 Tourist Trophy meeting in Ireland was the only other event entered by Jaguar that year, and it began badly and didn't finish very much better for the factory. Someone dropped a crate on William Lyon's Mk VII, the team's stop watches were stolen, and the new 'soft' Dunlop Stabilia tyres which were being tried were inadvertently muddled up, which meant a pressure check on every single one to see which were for front and which were for rear fitment.

The Rolt/Hamilton Jaguar retired with a broken scavenge pump, Moss had terrible trouble with his engine and had to do the waiting on the line act again, which he did underneath a huge umbrella before hobbling across for 18th place, while the other 2 1/2 litre car of Whitehead and Wharton was the sole surviving Jaguar and gained 5th place on handicap overall, and 2nd on handicap in its 2-3 litre class.

Jaguar plans for 1955
But Jaguar were already planning for the 1955 Le Mans. The 1955 'works' cars were built - these looked noticeably different from the 1954 cars, and there were even more changes under the skin although the essential design remained exactly the same.

Left and below: the original 50s body former on which the panels were created (now at Lynx Engineering)

Experience had merely resulted in cars which were more aerodynamic, lighter, and simpler to build and repair. The most radical alteration was made by giving the car's forward framework its independence from the central monocoque. While the 1954 frames had been largely welded on, the new structure was purely a 'bolt on' fixture, and additionally, it was made from nickel-steel not magnesium alloy tubing (the main members being of 18 swg, the lesser tubes 20 swg). The radiator, oil cooler and bonnet pivot were now carried by a separate tubular framework out- rigged from the front of the main frame, which could be detached by undoing four bolts. This made repair after a minor frontal accident cheaper and easier.

Aft of the front bulkhead, only the two lower frame members now penetrated the monocoque, the upper two being replaced by considerably smaller, circular section, tubes which sloped down to meet the bottom main members at the rear bulkhead, giving the driver somewhat more elbow room. All that was now necessary if the centre section and frame had to be parted was the unbolting of a series of nuts, and the dismantling of the battery and oil tank compartments by drilling out the rivets in that area; the entire front section of the car, which held the engine, front suspension and radiators, could then be withdrawn as a unit.

By virtue of its greater simplicity, and from the use of lighter gauge tubing which the stronger metal made possible, the new steel frame was actually lighter than the alloy one it replaced, at 56 lbs. The new D-type's tail section, although looking much the same from the outside, was now of entirely stressed-skin construction like the centre monocoque, the internal framework being discarded and integral strength being given by aluminium buttressing. The new arrangement both 'added lightness' and gave more wheel clearance.

Initially, eight of the new D-types were constructed, over the first four or five months of 1955; these were specifically destined for the factory's own use, and for two major private entrants - Ecurie Ecosse who received their two cars in May as already mentioned, and Ecurie National Beige who were sent XKD 503. The remaining five cars (up to XKD 508) were retained as the works team, reserve, and experimental cars, and were outwardly dis- tinguishable from both the 1954 cars and the 1955 private entrant D-types by their longer noses - the snouts had been extended by 7 1/2 inches to give an improved air penetration, and they now incorporated two air ducts for additional brake cooling.

Also, the long-nose cars had a much more comprehensive wrap-round windscreen which was intended to protect the driver from cross-wind buffeting which had been a nuisance the year before at Le Mans, especially down the Mulsanne Straight. It was faired into the headrest, which itself was all part of a new integral fin which now ended at the extreme rear of the body.

Malcolm Sayer was responsible for most of these exterior bodywork changes, which were about as many that could usefully be made, his original 1954 shape being difficult to improve on - even the technical personnel at RAE Farnborough who were glad to carry out various tests with Sayer could find little to improve on; all that they could suggest was that air-tight riveting be used, the body joints filled with wax before a race, and the importance of a good paint finish on the nose of the car, all factors which have to be taken into account at the sort of speeds that the D-type was reaching.

Cylinder head modifications
Mechanically, the biggest change that came to the 1955 'works' D-types involved the cylinder heads. Heynes had a reasonable suspicion that Mercedes were planning to enter the 1955 Le Mans race, and also knew that the 4.9 litre Ferrari of 1954 had been considerably quicker on acceleration (though not top speed) than the Jaguar the previous year. More power was obviously needed, and if low speed torque was not to be sacrificed by 'wild' timing, then a further increase in valve sizes was the obvious alternative.

Thus the inlet valve diameter went up from 1 7/8 inches to 2 inches, and the exhaust valve from 1 5/8 inches to 1 11/16 inches. To prevent the valves from touching it was then necessary to re-design the cylinder head to enable the inclination of the exhaust valve to be changed from 35 deg to 40 deg -hence the name '35/40' for this wide-angle D- type head. At the same time, camshaft lift was increased for the first time since 1951, from 1 3/8 inches to 1 7/16 inches lift, and the timing was widened too.

The same 45 mm Weber carburetters were used but on a slightly modified manifold, while the car's exhaust pipes no longer ended in front of the rear wheel but were continued right the way along underneath the body to emerge at the rear, with the idea of increasing the extractor effect. All these changes brought about an increase in power of some 30 bhp, 270 bhp now being produced at between 5,500 rpm and 6,000 rpm.

Brakes, apart from a slight lessening of the servo action to give a more progressive feel, steering (35 feet turning circle), and suspension remained basically as for the 1954 cars although the three cars (plus spare) destined for Le Mans 1955 had ZF differentials. Wheelbase and track were not of course affected, but the overall length of the long- nose car was 13 feet 5 1/2 inches.

The 'D' goes into production!
Meanwhile, the short nosed version of the 1955 D-type was actually being put into limited but quite genuine publicly-available production. To comply with race homologation rules, a very basic brochure (cover right) was made available. New features like the bolt-on front 'A' frame were now much easier to fabricate and assemble. Whereas previously a team of specialist Argon-arc welders had to be brought in to weld the magnesium alloy sub-frames of the original 1954 cars, the 1955 steel frames could easily be brazed up by Jaguar's own fitters.

Production of the cars was soon put on a more rationalized basis too - at first the experimental/racing department assembled the production D-types alongside the factory's own team cars, but there was very little room so most of the work was transferred to the road-car production and engineering department, where a true D-type assembly line was laid down in the main hall at Allesley, surrounded by Mk VII saloons and XK 140 sports cars.

The production D-type might have been made on something similar to a normal assembly line, but it was still very much a racing car and preparation was appropriately meticulous. Before the fully-assembled engine was installed in the frame, its main components were crack tested, dynamically and statically balanced, its pistons carefully balanced and graded, and valve clearances checked and rechecked by clock gauge. Tab washers on nuts were avoided in favour of drilling and wiring. When finally put together, the engine would be bench-tested on one of the three or four 'brakes' in the experimental department, and individual power outputs noted.

The engine didn't meet the chassis until the completed central tub had been equipped with its sub-frame, suspension and wheels. Then with bonnet and rear end in place (these were made by Abbey Panels), the car passed to the experimental department where it underwent an exhaustive checking procedure before eventually arriving at MIRA for further comprehensive mobile testing.

Andrew J A Whyte ('John Appleton'), in his authoritative Profile of the D-type Jaguar, supplies us with a number of interesting facts from the factory archives relating to the testing and distribution of the production D-type. The first car to go through the full production system was XKD 509, which completed some 60 laps of the banked outer circuit at MIRA in July 1955. The first line built D-type to be sold to a private customer was XKD 514, which went to Sir Robert Ropner in County Durham in August 1955 -and which was, and is, used as a road car by its original owner.

Sixty-seven D-types were constructed and tested in the years 1955 and 1956, over 20,000 test miles being covered in the process. Although every car was tested at least twice, factory records show that XKD 525 completed the most miles in this way, before finally being passed as OK and despatched to the States - it clocked up some 650 miles in eight test sessions.

It was in fact the United States which received the largest single share of these 67 D-types, 18 reaching its shores. Britain was next with 10, Australia had 3, France 2, and one each went to Cuba, Finland, New Zealand, Spain, San Salvador, East Africa, Mexico, Belgium and Canada. These totals account for the 42 cars sold and of the remainder, 9 chassis were destroyed in Jaguar's February 1957 fire or used as parts, and 16 were used as the basis of the XKSS.

At a price of £3,878 the production D-type probably represented even greater value than Jaguar's road cars, and the new owner of each even received an informative 57-page service handbook.

The 1955 Le Mans
The new long nose 'works' cars first saw action in the 1955 Le Mans race, one of the most dramatic and certainly the most tragic in the event's long history. The scene was set for a Homeric battle between Jaguar and Mercedes, who had returned to motor-racing and finally to Le Mans itself with their advanced 300SLR open sports racing cars, one of which had already won the Mille Miglia that year.

Ferrari too looked like being well in contention, with a team of 4 1/2 litre six cylinder cars, while the threat from Maserati and Aston Martin could never be discounted. Ranged against this awe-inspiring opposition were the factory's three dark green D-types, with driver pairings of Mike Hawthorn/Ivor Bueb, Tony Rolt/Duncan Hamilton, and Norman Dewis/Don Beauman; backed up by two privately entered short-nosed cars, Johnny Claes and Jacques Swaters in the Belgian car, and Phil Walters and Bill Spear driving Briggs Cunningham's first Jaguar entry at Le Mans.

It was Castellotti with his Ferrari who set the Grand Prix- like pace at the start of the race, leading Hawthorn in his works D-type and Fangio in the air-braked Mercedes for the first hour, all three cars being breathtakingly close for much of the time. In this company, Hawthorn was delighted to find he could pass the German and Italian cars with ease down the Mulsanne Straight, the D-type pulling some 5,800 rpm on its 2.69:1 axle (or around 180 mph), compared to the 7,200 rpm being held by Fangio in the 3-litre fuel-injected Mercedes in his vain attempt to keep up.

The British and German cars engaged in the struggle makes an interesting comparison.

The D-type relied strongly on well-proven and highly developed production parts in a comparatively simple - though novel - 'chassis', with relatively unsophisticated suspension, while Mercedes Benz put their faith in the engineering ingenuity of their desmodromic valve, petrol injected straight eight engine, and all round independent suspension (although the complicated down-draught inlet M196 engine was to be slated by Harry Mundy years later as "an example of poor performance" inspite of its complexity and huge 1.968 inch inlet valves, as with "the advantage of a well developed reliable desmodromic valve gear, roller bearings throughout, it developed barely 300 bhp at 7,450 rpm and a maximum bmep of 185 lbs sq in").

As an overall package, the D-type was the more successful 'Le Mans' car with its disc brakes and superior streamlining - the 300SLR, in spite of carrying a smaller engine, had an excessive frontal area and was actually larger than the Jaguar. Although so far as the 3-litre engine was concerned, Uhlenhaut was quoted as saying that had not expediency demanded the use of what was basically their Formula 1 engine, Mercedes would have preferred to have used a larger unit in their sports car. And besides its mediocre power output, L J K Setright once described its torque curve as being like "a drunkard's design for a scenic railway" which didn't make the car any easier to drive!

In braking, Mercedes replied to Jaguar's Dunlop disc brake with their controversial air brake supplementing the car's inboard drums; it was first tried out on the early racing 300SLs although not at Le Mans. Driver controlled, the air brake certainly cut down the car's speed dramatically at high speed, and even at low speed the drivers found its use worthwhile. As another indication of Mercedes' lack of faith in their drum brakes, the driver of the 300SLR had an array of four syringes to press, by which means oil could be delivered to any drum should grabbing occur - provided he could guess which drum was giving the trouble!

The Mercedes-Jaguar battle continued for some 2 1/2 hours, the Ferrari gradually dropping behind. Hawthorn found that on fast corners the Mercedes suspension scored, Fangio gaining quite considerably at places like White House, but on slow corners the difference between the two cars was not marked. Out of the very tight Mulsanne corner the D-type held the 300SLR on acceleration in first and second gears, but Fangio's five-speed box allowed the German car to pull away until fourth gear on the Jaguar was engaged. Of Castellotti's Ferrari, Hawthorn had this to say in his autobiography Challenge Me The Race:

“The Ferrari's brakes were not as good as ours and their behaviour on corners was not all it might have been; but on acceleration Castellotti just left us both standing, laying incredible long black streaks of molten rubber on the road as he roared away.”

But notwithstanding its fiercesome acceleration, the Ferrari inexorably fell behind as Hawthorn and Fangio repeated, or even excelled, their memorable Rheims single seater encounter. At one point in the race Fangio forced the Mercedes in front, and but for Hawthorn's courage and determination that might have been it. But as he retold afterwards:

“I suppose at this stage I was momentarily mesmerised by the legend of Mercedes superiority. Here was this squat silver projectile, handled by the world's best driver, with its fuel injection and desmodromic valve gear, its complicated suspension and its out-of-this-world air brake. Then I came to my senses and thought: 'Damn it, why should a German car beat a British car?' As there was no one in sight but me to stop it, I got down to it and caught up with him again.”

Disaster strikes
This Hawthorn did to such effect that he set a new lap record, at an unprecedented 122.39 mph. By this time, all but four cars out of the entire field had been lapped by the leaders - and then came the terrifying accident in which upwards of 85 people were killed, and many more injured. There are still varying accounts of how exactly it occured, but all that can really be said is that as Hawthorn pulled into the pits for the D-type's first scheduled fuel stop, Lance Macklin's Austin Healey came into the path of Pierre Levegh's works Mercedes, which, travelling at somewhere around 150 mph, suddenly had nowhere to go. In the freak accident that followed, the silver car flew over the safety barrier and disintegrated amongst the crowd in front of the grandstand opposite the pits.

Hawthorn, only dimly aware of what had happened, rolled past the Jaguar pit in the confusion, and as reversing wasn't allowed, ran back to Lofty England and asked if he could complete another lap. He did so, then in a state of near collapse left the D-type at the pits.

Ivor Bueb stepped into the cockpit, having had to stand on the pit counter for a solid five minutes watching the carnage while Hawthorn completed his extra lap. It was his first race in the D-type, and his first Le Mans. But nevertheless, he took the car out of the pits and drove - although admitting later that for the first six laps at least, passing the flames each time round, he fought against the urge to come in and hand over to Bob Berry, the reserve driver.

Hawthorn wants to quit
The shocked Hawthorn was in a similar - though worse - state of mind, and had to be persuaded to continue by Lofty England. Of this moment, Hawthorn recalled in his book:

“During those terrible hours he was a tower of strength. While people went back and forth consulting precedents and debating about what should be done, Lofty saw the situation quite clearly and simply. Nothing that he could say or do would alter the consequences of the accident in the slightest degree. He had come to Le Mans to win a motor race and so long as the race kept going, it was his job to win it.”

Jaguar wins
Win it Jaguar did too, at the record average speed of 106.99 mph, after the entire Mercedes team had withdrawn on orders from Stuttgart with their leading car ahead of the Hawthorn/ Bueb D-type by some two laps. The latter (XKD 505) was the only 'works' Jaguar to finish - Don Beauman, something of a Hawthorn protégé, had been paired with works test driver Norman Dewis in XKD 508, but had run the car into the sandbank at Arnage; he had just dug it out when the sudden arrival of Colin Chapman's Lotus-Climax effectively made it a non-runner. Rolt and Hamilton meanwhile had retired with loss of oil from the gearbox, which had left them with only third and top gears after running in second place for a while following the Mercedes retirement.

The only finisher of the two private Jaguar entrants was the D-type of Claes and Swaters, which came in a good third behind the Aston Martin of Peter Collins and Paul Frere. Americans Walters and Spear retired on the evening of the first day with engine failure, probably on account of the car's air box breaking up and destroying a valve.

It will always be a matter for speculation whether Mercedes would have won the 1955 Grand Prix d'Endurance but for their withdrawal after the accident. But that being said, it can be argued that the odds were in fact in favour of the Jaguar, in spite of the fact that the Hawthorn/Bueb car was about two laps down on the German leader when the latter retired. Not only had the D-type already put up the fastest lap, and therefore proved itself the quickest car around the circuit (Fangio admitted afterwards that he could have gone no faster), but it also proved that it was capable of finishing the whole 24 hours after the flat-out motoring in the initial stages of the race; it was rumoured that the Fangio/Moss 300SLR had been suffering clutch problems towards the end of its run.

Furthermore, the Rolt/Hamilton D-type had covered 14 laps in its last hour of the race, compared to the Mercedes' 13, indicating some additional reserve on behalf of the British cars.

Tragedy for Lyons
The occasion of the 1955 race was also a personal tragedy for William Lyons. His son, Michael John Lyons, was killed in a collision between his car and an American forces' lorry over a blind brow, about ten miles from Cherbourg, shortly after he had disembarked from the air ferry on his way to Le Mans.

Amongst the many repercussions of the Le Mans accident was the cancellation of the Rheims 12-Hour race that year, and the next appearance of a works D-type was the sole entry of Hawthorn at the British GP meeting at Aintree. He led initially but was overwhelmed by the nimbler Aston Martins and finished 5th; in common with opinions expressed by other D-type drivers, Hawthorn decided he didn't like Aintree, its slower corners not suiting the Jaguar's rigid rear axle, losing the car a lot of time through wheelspin.

Discussing the respective merits of the D-type and the DB3S Aston Martin, Hawthorn and Peter Collins came to the conclusion that the Aston, with its de Dion rear end, liked either very fast corners or very slow ones, which is why it often excelled at the Nurburgring (or Aintree) to the detriment of the Jaguar, but didn't suit medium speed bends; this would explain why the Jaguar could be hard to beat at Silverstone where these latter type of corner predominate. Of Le Mans, Hawthorn had expressed the opinion that the only place where the Jaguar lost out to its independent or de Dion rivals was White House.

More events
Ecurie Ecosse had been considerably more active with XKD 501 and 502 however, Desmond Titterington and Ninian Sanderson together driving to an excellent 2nd place in the Goodwood 9-Hours race in August 1955, in between the works Astons. Bob Berry and Norman Dewis managed 5th place in Jack Broadhead's car but might have finished even higher had they not underestimated the pace of the event.

The Tourist Trophy of 1955 at Dundrod was notable for the resumption of the Hawthorn/ Fangio battle so sadly broken off at Le Mans, and for the fact that this was to be the last such race held over that marvellous circuit of closed public roads. Again only one works car was entered, driven by Hawthorn and local man Titterington. It was originally meant to run a de Dion axle car, this type of rear suspension having already been tried in the works develop- ment car XKC 401; however, the Metalastic joints proved troublesome and it was the normally suspended XKD 506 that appeared on the grid.

Moss almost immediately took the lead for Mercedes as the race began, although a good start by Bob Berry in his Broadhead-entered D-type saw him temporarily head the German car. Alas for Berry and co-driver Sanderson who never got a drive, a nudge of a bank on the second lap resulted in a deflating tyre which put OKV 2 into a field shortly afterwards. On this same lap at a different spot, two drivers lost their lives in a multiple accident which contributed to the closure of the circuit so far as the TT was concerned.

With Moss always ahead, Hawthorn and Fangio indulged in an awe-inspiring display of competitive driving which on occasions brought the crowd to its feet as the two cars flashed past the pits almost level. Fangio managed to slip past the Jaguar on the descent of the Deers Leap, but Hawthorn re-took the Mercedes two laps later and soon a new lap record was posted - Hawthorn had circulated the D-type in 4 mins 42 seconds, or 94.67 mph, to set a four-wheel record for Dundrod that was to stand in perpetuity. It was actually faster than the record Farina had set driving the supercharged 158 Alfa Romeo.

While the D-type didn't have the five speed gearbox of the Mercedes, the Jaguar team had the tyre situation well in hand and the Dunlop Stabilia tyres provided excellent dry weather grip and withstood the abrasive surface of the roads excellently. Seventeen inch wheels were used to further minimise tyre wear, and with an axle ratio of 3.31:1 the car was well geared for the hilly circuit, whose many medium speed bends seemed to suit the Jaguar's primitive (by Mercedes' standards) rear suspension.

A rear anti-roll bar which was being tried on Hawthorn's car for the first time in a race obviously assisted in overcoming the D-type's understeering qualities which were a handicap in some instances. Hawthorn also set the highest maximum speed recorded over the timed kilometer at Dundrod, at 148.5 mph. The German team, on the other hand, lacked Jaguar's experience of the circuit and were particularly afflicted by tyre problems, Moss's offside rear wing being almost completely ripped away by a flailing tread when a rear tyre shredded.

Hawthorn, backed up valiantly by Titterington, made a soul- stirring attempt to stave off the Mercedes attack which had now been taken up by Moss, but it could not be done, typical Ulster rain cancelling out the Jaguar's tyre advantage; and although fuel stops by the German car put the Jaguar ahead, Moss again overtook Hawthorn and went on to win. Even what seemed to be a safe second place was denied the Jaguar, as the D-type's crankshaft broke when Hawthorn was in sight of the pits.

So Mercedes were first and second (though even Fangio had been lapped) and although by the number of laps covered, Jaguar would have been 3rd, the rule book didn't acknowledge it and the Mercedes of von Trips and Simon took that place. Ferrari had made a surprisingly poor showing, the highest placed being Castellotti and Taruffi in 6th position, while the Aston Martin of Walker and Poore were 4th, and the Maserati of Musso and Musy 5th.

Meanwhile Duncan Hamilton had bought a second ex-works car, XKD 406, which he loaned to Michael Head and George Abecassis who scored 2nd places at Goodwood and Snetterton respectively. Duncan himself previously won the 50 mile 'Unlimited' sports car race at Silverstone in September (with OKV 1), and while beating Abecassis at the Snetterton meeting, spun backwards across the finishing line when a tyre burst. It was, he said, the only race he could remember winning while pointing the wrong way.

Updates for 1956
The 1956 Le Mans race was the last the factory were to enter officially, and six new cars were built specifically for the event. With long-nose bodywork, they resembled the 1955 works cars except that for the 24 hours race they wore the regulation 8 inches deep full-width windscreen, demanded for Constructors' Championship events with a view to keeping speeds down. The best was made of the new regulations by positioning a Vyback transparent cover over the passenger compartment, effectively streamlining the area as much as possible; previously the passenger seat had been covered by a removable aluminium lid. Other concessions to the regulations included a door for the theoretical passenger, and wider seats (at 20 inches). The new cars were however some 50 - 60 lbs lighter than before, weight being saved by the use of lighter gauge alloy where possible, and the use of yet lighter brackets. The inside of the tail was slightly altered to accommodate the smaller, 28 gallon, fuel tank which the regulations also demanded.

Handling was improved by increasing the roll stiffness of the car, this being achieved by bringing the diameter of the front anti-roll bar up from 9/16 inch to 11/16 inch, and by incorporating the % inch rear anti-roll bar which had been tried out at Dundrod. This connected the top two suspension links together.

An important mechanical innovation was the Lucas petrol injection system which was fitted to Hawthorn's D-type for Le Mans 1956, and which received extensive testing in the months beforehand both on the original 'injection' car XKD 504, and on XKD 605 itself at Rheims, held before Le Mans that year.

By the time Le Mans came around, a minor modification had been made to the gearbox; this was a lock-out mechanism which ensured that bottom gear could only be selected by fully depressing the clutch, an alteration prompted by Tony Dennis's fatal crash at Goodwood earlier that year. Driving Hamilton's car, XKD 510, he inadvertently changed from top to first gear at about 110 mph which of course caused the rear wheels to lock up and throw the D-type off the road. Lyons had all possible D-types recalled to the factory to have this safety device fitted following this incident.

The new works cars first appeared at Silver-stone in May 1956, where Titterington wrote off XKD 604 in an opening lap crash. This was the D-type equipped with a de Dion rear end, and so the only appearance of the Jaguar de Dion rear end in a race was very brief! Titterington had however got below 1 min 50 seconds in practice, only Hawthorn in XKD 603 and Salvadori's Aston Martin also getting under that time. Not a good day for Jaguar, Hawthorn retired too after setting a record fastest lap at 1 min 47 seconds.

Hawthorn did try the de Dion car round Silverstone before the race, and found that it did indeed cut out a lot of the wheelspin which occurred on corners even with the ZF limited slip differential. While the de Dion arrangement weighed more than the standard D-type rear end, on balance Hawthorn decided he preferred it and only drove the other car because Titterington said that he couldn't manage so well with the rigid rear axle car.

The Nurburgring was the second factory visit of the season, and it was soon obvious to those who hadn't driven a D-type around that incredible circuit before that it was no place for a Jaguar. Paul Frere, who had joined the works team a month or so beforehand, wrote afterwards :

"In many places our speed was limited not so much by the convolutions of the circuit as our desire to keep the car in one piece. Along the whole stretch from Breitscheid to the Karrusel the back wheels were more in the air than on the ground, and with a full tank the suspension was bottoming frequently."

Frere was in fact to leave the track rather dramatically during practice, though he was gracious enough not to blame XKD 603! Norman Dewis drove out a replacement from Coventry in nearly record time, but that failed too when the gearbox broke. Hawthorn was lying 4th in the other works D-type (XKD 601, injection) when with only five laps to go a supplementary 2-gallon metal petrol tank mounted in the passenger's seat sprung a leak, necessitating a pit stop to effect a repair as the fumes were making Hawthorn ill. Titterington took over but the car's run came to an end when a half-shaft failed half a lap from the chequered flag. Hamilton, paired with Frere, didn't get a drive at all.

Rheims 1956
The re-instituted 12-hour race at Rheims was, however, a much happier affair for the team, even though it caused some internal conflict. Two cars had already put in considerable private practice during the previous May, the results of which indicated that they should do well, especially as the circuit had always suited Jaguars. In fact, the team's only worries were those of finding worthy opposition as neither Aston Martin, Ferrari or Maserati were represented by works teams. Fortunately the late entries of a new 3y2-litre Maserati driven by Villoresi and Piotti, a Monza Ferrari, and the HWM-Jaguar of Leston and Cunningham-Reid made things appear a little more worthwhile.

The works Jaguars immediately established themselves in the first three places when the race began, backed up by the Ecurie Ecosse D-type driven by Sanderson, who had won the 100-mile Belgian Production Sports Car race at Spa two months earlier. The only real drama of the race occurred when, after the whole Jaguar team was under orders to slow down, Hamilton in XKD 605 overtook Frere. To his consternation the Belgian driver/journalist found that the carburetted engine in his XKD 601 was rather less powerful than Hamilton's fuel injected unit -contrary to the results of tests held the previous May on the circuit. So the finishing order was thus Hamilton/Bueb, Hawthorn/Frere, Titterington/Fairman, and Sanderson/Flockhart for Ecurie Ecosse. Poor Duncan got his marching orders from Lofty after the speeding up episode - he always swore that he did slow down, but that it enabled him to take a better line through a corner which had the side-effect of reducing his lap times!

Le Mans for 1956
So the Jaguar team was in good spirits when Le Mans came round in July. The cars were equipped with their full-width windscreens and the other Le Mans regulation items, and the cylinder heads had been modified with economy in mind - the cars would need to average around 11 - 12 mpg now that the tankage had been reduced. Importantly, the cars' disc brakes had quick-change pads for the first time, so that the friction material could be changed at the same time as a wheel change with virtually no penalty incurred in terms of extra time lost.

The capacity limit for prototypes was now 2 1/2 litres, but Jaguar were able to run in the production class due to the number of D-types which had been, or were intending to be, made - in fact it was the biggest engined car running. Quite how the two Aston Martin DB3S cars came to be accepted is a mystery!

The works driver pairings were Hawthorn and Bueb again in XKD 605 (injection), Frere/ Titterington XKD 606 (Webers), and Fairman/ Wharton XKD 602 (injection). Ecurie Ecosse were running XKD 501 as an exploratory excursion for a team entry next year, while Equipe National Beige had entered a new production D-type, XKD 573, prepared by the factory and driven by Laurent/Rousselle.

In practice (which was still just before the race in those days, not weeks beforehand as now) the works Jaguars were a comfortable six or seven seconds faster than any other make, with little difference in either speed or fuel con- sumption between the injected or carburetted cars. Titterington ran off the road in XKD 606 and although it didn't appear to be damaged, it was replaced by the spare car, XKD 603.

Hawthorn's car had to be fitted with a new engine because of a persistent misfire, and he also suffered a thrown tread at 140 mph - this prompted Lofty to investigate the remaining tyres which were tested on the track, mostly by Bueb. Sure enough, several more 'rogue' covers were discovered. But still Hawthorn expressed a feeling of pessimism, as although the Jaguar drivers had the fastest cars in the race, with only Aston Martin likely to even be within striking distance, the number one driver felt that it was all too good to be true. His fears began to be justified on the second lap of the race.

A light drizzle had started just before 4 pm, and as the field left the new pits area and accelerated under the Dunlop Bridge for the first time, the track was undoubtedly in a treacherous state. Hawthorn at this time "felt a shock as though another car had hit me... The tyres were alternately gripping and slipping on the slippery road surface" Then on the second lap, Paul Frere braked gently and in plenty of time - as he thought - for the Esses, but he had already left it too late.

Although he took the widest line possible in the hope of finding a drier patch on the inside of the road, the D-type spun round on the wet surface (made even more deadly by the fine Le Mans sand which had blown onto the track before the rain had come) and hit the wattle fence lining the earth banking on the outside of the bend. Jack Fairman, following, spun XKD 602 in a successful attempt to avoid his team mate, but was promptly struck by de Portago's Ferrari which had also 'lost it'. Hence, the race had hardly begun and two thirds of the Jaguar team were already wiped out!

Fairman managed to hobble back to the pits but the mortified Frere could only manage to get clear of the Esses and pull onto the verge. And to make matters appear totally disastrous for the factory, the remaining unscathed D-type of Hawthorn began a series of pit stops suffering from an elusive misfire. It taxed the wits of the Jaguar mechanics and Lucas fuel injection specialists alike, and eventually the trouble was traced to a hair line crack in a fuel line (faulty brazing on an injector nipple according to Hawthorn) - the only thing that hadn't been changed when the new engine was installed just before the race.

Ecurie Ecosse saves the day
By that time, any chance of victory for the works team had vanished, and all that remained was the fastest lap to go for; this Hawthorn dutifully accomplished shortly after midnight and before handing over to Bueb, although due to the new windscreen the speed, at 115.8 mph, was a long way down on the previous year's Jaguar record. By dint of some exceptionally rapid motoring the car was brought up from its 20th position to 6th - but it was Ecurie Ecosse that saved the day for Jaguar.

As daylight came the Jaguar drew ahead, and by the end of the morning had estab- lished itself a safe lap ahead of the Aston. The Scottish Jaguar incorporated the various chassis refinements of the factory cars (such as the rear anti-roll bar), but did not have the big-valve 35/40 head or petrol injection. Its progress was aided though by the new quick- change pads, which could be replaced in 40 seconds merely by withdrawing a split pin and pulling them out. The new quick-change braking system was further simplified by the use of a single pair of wheel cylinders instead of three on each of the front calipers.

Watching the leading Jaguar from the touch-line, Paul Frere was keeping all his fingers crossed. "Never in all my life had I hoped so fervently that a car would win a race as I did then". One can well understand why! But faultlessly, calmly, the Ecurie Ecosse Jaguar tucked away the laps, and finally crossed the line as the 24 hours of motor racing were completed, sounding as healthy as when it had begun the afternoon before.

The end of an era looms
So ended the last race in which Jaguar Cars competed as an official team. The company's exploits in the French classic had had an amazing impact on their sales figures all over the world, and had helped make the name 'Jaguar' universally known - which it certainly wasn't in the early post-war years. This probably needs emphasizing today, when it is hard to believe that many people had never heard of the small concern building fast cars in Coventry; that however is the reason why Jaguar went to Le Mans. Lofty England: "we were just starting to get into the market, people didn't even know what a Jaguar car was. If you were in one people would pull up beside you and say, 'What is it?', but as soon as we won Le Mans, people who were interested in cars immediately knew what a Jaguar was, and the name went forward very quickly."

After the 1956 24-Hour race, Heynes and his small group of engineers considered the D-type to be an obsolete motor car. A new car was needed, and there simply weren't the available personnel to develop and build it, as the production side of Jaguar urgently demanded the skills and knowledge of the men who had built the racing cars to improve the current road cars.

They also had to prepare for the next generation of road Jaguars - even in 1956 the E-type replacement for the XK 150 (which itself hadn't even been announced then!) was beginning to take shape on the drawing board, and would be running in prototype form by early 1957.

However, the factory's withdrawal was, at the time, only meant to be temporary. To quote Lofty England again, "When we pulled out in 1956 it was with the intention of staying out for a year and coming back, subject to our having a car which we felt was right."

1957 - the factory fire intervenes
But once out of racing, it becomes increasingly difficult to re-enter and what probably killed any possibility of it actually happening was the fire at the factory in February 1957. It destroyed what had been the D-type 'production line', together with a number of vital jigs and tools needed by the competition department. The effort needed to re-establish this competition-orientated section of the factory was just too much at a time when all energies were being directed into getting normal production under way in the quickest possible time after the ravages of the fire.

Left: a D-type - casualty of the fire

As Lofty England says:

“All things relating to competition were forgotten - had to be. The main object was to get the factory going again with all possible speed, back into profitability, which was done very quickly. The demand for cars had lifted up like that, and therefore everybody's main interest was to make sure we were doing our job properly production wise, and also take care of our future model range, which meant that there wasn't any great necessity to rush back into motor racing. We didn't have to motor race to make sure we were getting enough orders, neither did we want to take up our people's time on motor racing projects when we really needed them on our production lines.”

Thus ended Jaguar's own competition career, and although support lingered in America and the company was to remain in touch with the racing scene right up until 1966 when the XJ13 prototype was secretly finished, Jaguar were never again to enter the sport officially themselves.

Paul Skilleter