The Jaguar C-Type has a proud racing history and from today’s point of view is the beginning of Jaguar Cars Ltd’s impressive motorsport program. The XKC was born out of the idea of William Lyons – not a “sir”at this time yet and his Chief developer William Heynes in the late summer of 1950. The two wanted to give the sporting image of the brand a lasting boost and demonstrate the result to the international audience and potential buyers in the following year in Le Mans. Quod erat demonstrandum!While the drive of the brand new C-Type built on the proven engine of the XK120, its robust, but weighty chassis has been replaced by a very lightweight tubular frame. The Jaguar Cars Ltd. developed three different variants of the C-Type:The first variant were the three “pre-production” racing cars of Le Mans in 1951 – which reached their destination incidentally on their own wheels – equipped with drum brakes, two SU carburetors and eye-catching air outlets on the hood. The second variant was the production vehicles built from 1952 – from chassis number XKC005 to XKC049, also with drum brakes and SU carburetors, but with swept air outlets on the hood. The last evolution of the C-Type were the factory race cars 1953, which differed from the customer XKC but in some features: The revised engines showed three Weber double carburetor type 40DCO3, the body was handmade using very thin alloy sheet-metal, even an airborne rubber fuel tank was used. Jaguar installed Dunlop disc brakes and a servo amplifier for brake pressure support for the first time. For improved roadholding in Le Mans, the rear axle got an additional support and the front axle got a stronger anti-roll bar. The reward of their work invested: Game, set and victory. On June 14, 1953 at 16:00 the Jaguar Boys had their job done. The Jaguar C-types literally rolled down their competitors, with first, second and fourth place finishes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The decade of the big cat began in 1949 with the magnificent sports car XK120 and led to probably the most beautiful automobile ever, the type XKE \u2013 better known in continental Europe as E-Type. The C-Type developed for use in motorsport in 1951 from the XK120 was completely new except for the optimized engine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":35556,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[290,62,71,622,60,603,615],"product_tag":[],"class_list":["post-3186","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-all-products","product_cat-models-118","product_cat-jaguar","product_cat-cmc-jaguar-na","product_cat-currently-not-available","product_cat-evergreens","product_cat-post-war-vehicles","first","outofstock","taxable","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n