By 1973 Jaguar’s motorsport glories were long behind it. It had been 16 years since one of its cars had last won the 24 Hours of Le Mans while even its final entry in the race it had once ruled was way back in 1964. And with parent company British Leyland lacking the resources to go racing, there seemed little chance of Jaguar returning to the track. Yet despite all of this, the company still had a presence at the 1973 British Grand Prix, albeit with a dated never-before-seen prototype.
The homely setting of Ferry Porsche’s front room provides the backdrop for this informal gathering one evening in March 1974. This was a preliminary discussion on the possibility of cooperating with a car manufacturer in what was then the Soviet Union.
We all have cars that we love because of a personal association and for me the Jaguar X-Type is just that. Yes, I know it has its haters, and the “nice Mondeo, mate” jokes can be a tad tiresome, but for me it’s car with a connection.
There was great excitement in the 1970s and 1980s when Jaguar re-entered international motorsport. It started with support of Bob Tullius’s Group 44 outfit in the States followed by Tom Walkinshaw’s TWR team originally in the European Touring Car Championship with the XJ-S and later Group C endurance racing. But thanks to its five victories in the Fifties, for Jaguar the most important race had always been the 24 Hours of Le Mans. By 1987 and with TWR starting to become genuinely competitive in the World Sports Car Championship we knew there was a real possibility of us winning for the first time since 1957.
Despite ruling Le Mans throughout the Fifties with five overall victories plus three second, two third and four fourth places, Jaguar’s dominance of the famous 24 Hours race came to an end in the early Sixties with a disappointing ninth place. When motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, introduced a new GT class for endurance racing from 1962 onwards, many privateers chose the new E-Type. The homologated version initially showed great promise with two examples finishing a strong fourth and fifth at 24 Heures du Mans in 1962 with the outfits of Briggs Cunningham and Peter Sargent.
The politics behind racing are sometimes more intriguing than the on-track action itself. When the VW Group acquired Bentley from Vickers in 1998, it immediately set about picking up the pieces of a brand that was by then reduced to a poor cousin of Rolls-Royce. This mission found further fervour through the painful reminder that not only had VW lost the bid for Rolls-Royce to BMW; but the latter would also win Le Mans the year thereafter.
In January 2000 we were all breathing a sigh of relief that the Millennium Bug hadn’t actually caused all the world’s computers to crash and the planes to fall from the sky. And in Ford’s ever-fertile design hub, there was no time to dilly-dally or rest on any laurels; they were right onto the next big thing and, somewhat improbably, they managed to predict the existence of apps a full seven years before smartphones arrived. The vessel for that impressive prediction was the car you see here, the radical 24.7 concept.
Here’s Ferry Porsche presiding over what looks like a management meeting. He’s flanked by his oldest son, design director Ferdinand Alexander – or Butzi as most people now call him – and his nephew, technical director Ferdinand Piëch.
Automotive archaeologist Richard Heseltine unearths automotive oddity… this one even has wreaths, crests and references to a mythical city of gold… How could they?!
Ready to go racing after an extensive two-year restoration, RLR 962-200 is one of the most historically significant Group C prototypes ever to wear the Porsche crest…
The 24 Hours of Le Mans that took place in 1980 was an odd race by Porsche’s standards. CEO Ernst Fuhrmann had decreed that not only would the 911 not be developed further, but neither would the 936 Sports prototype. Instead, Porsche would campaign at Le Mans with the 924, suitably modified and turbocharged. The transaxle 924 (the 944 was in the wings) and 928 were, in his view, the company’s future. The Porsche racing fraternity was dismayed, while other competitors were puzzled. These GT-class 924s – even with 350bhp – were hardly potential race winners, but Ernst, for whom this would be his last Le Mans with Porsche, was unperturbed.
On the cover of CAR’s July 1973 issue the tabloid-style headline screamed ‘Whose Spanner In Whose Works?’ The story of the British car industry’s woes in the Seventies is wellknown in retrospect, with unrealistic trade union demands and corner-cutting management generally blamed. But this article brings in an international angle that’s rarely discussed. ‘British Leyland’s much vaunted money injection last spring may have come too late,’ wrote Clive Ranger. ‘In 1971 they invested only £48 million against £130 million for Fiat and £124 million for VW. No wonder foreign competitors in the British market have become a cause for concern.’
