Agent47 Posted July 4, 2022 Posted July 4, 2022 The secret behind this car’s glory emerges the instant that you slow it down. Press the shiny black metal middle pedal and the Jaguar C-Type decelerates with surprising strength, so effective are its discs and their Dunlop hydraulic calipers. It was this mighty ability to shed speed that helped it to win the 1953 Le Mans 24 Hours race. Not that this was the C-Type’s first Le Mans victory: it won in 1951, too, and at the first time of trying, then running with drum brakes against less threatening opposition. Why are we telling you about an event that occurred 70-odd years ago? Because Jaguar has for the first time allowed a drive in one of its so-called Continuation C-Types, a 21st-century, forensic recreation of the special-bodied Competition version (hence C-Type) of the XK120 sports car. The trigger for this new build of an old car was the 70th anniversary of that first Le Mans victory, although this recreated C-Type is far from the first Jaguar Continuation model, with new versions of the Jaguar XKSS, Jaguar D-Type, Jaguar E-Type Lightweight and the standard Jaguar E-Type all having been produced in tiny quantities. In the C-Type’s case, the run is of 16 cars, and if you have a loose £1.5 million (plus taxes), you can have one of the final eight cars. It's an absurd price on one level of course, less so if you consider that one of the original 53 cars will cost you upwards of £3m. When you learn of the work that has gone into the recreation of this car you begin to realise how a seven-digit price tag develops. The 3.4-litre XK engine block has been retooled. The complex Dunlop disc brake system, developed out of early-1950s aviation technology, has been reverse-engineered. Intensive detail work followed the recreation of the car in digital form from original blueprints and the measurement of original cars. The 1953 Le Mans-winning iteration of the C-Type was chosen for recreation, this version featuring the-then revolutionary disc brakes and triple Weber carburation for a 220bhp power output. As it weighs only 1063kg, this C-Type goes really rather well – and feels appealingly odd, too. The oddness stems from the car’s newness. Even aboard an expensively restored old car, you’re likely to find components that hint at its age. Not so in this Jaguar, where every old-fashioned-looking item is new and consistently so. That extends to the physical experience, too, this car feeling taut, tight, strong and rattle-free, just as a new car should. Link : https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/jaguar/c-type-continuation
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