THE NOMINEES
1 Jaguar XK120
This ultimate post-war British sportscar put Jaguar on the international competition map, with style and performance the brand became synonymous with.
The XK120’s breadth was extraordinary: it started Jaguar’s Le Mans story in large part with a fine showing in 1950, took two RAC Rally wins and even became the first foreignbuilt car to win in NASCAR’s top class.
2 Jaguar C-type
Jaguar’s Le Mans legend starts in earnest here, as the C-type took the marque’s first two wins therein in 1951 and ’53. And the 1953 win charted new territory as the first Le Mans win with an average speed of over 100mph plus the car featured the grand technological stride of disc brakes, far outperforming the then-standard drum variety.
3 Jaguar D-type
The iconic D-type sums up Jaguar: successful, elegant and revolutionary. It even had a feline look.
The ground-breaking car introduced a magnesium alloy monocoque and – most noticeably –benefited from sleek wind-tunnel-honed aerodynamics.
It won Le Mans three times from 1955 to ’57, and in the last of these took five of the top six finishing places.
4 Jaguar XJ12C
On results the Jaguar XJ12C was an undoubted failure. Yet the striking and magnificent-sounding V12-engined machine was a glorious failure.
The Broadspeed-prepared XJ12C routinely outpaced allcomers in the European Touring Car Championship. But the project was canned before reliability problems were sorted, making the XJ12C a yearning what-might-have-been tale.
5 Jaguar XJ-S
In the early 1980s Jaguar returned to international motorsport eminence after a quarter century away with its Tom Walkinshaw Racing V12-powered Jaguar XJ-S in the European Touring Car Championship.
The XJ-S, with Walkinshaw’s rugged driving and team management, was immediately a factor and by 1984, in British Racing Green, it clinched the drivers’ title plus the Spa 24-hours.
6 Jaguar XJR-9
For much of the 1980s sportscar racing, and Le Mans, meant Porsche. That was until the Tom Walkinshaw Racing-Jaguar partnership.
And the crowning glory was the XJR-9’s heady and scintillating 1988 Le Mans triumph, Jaguar’s first Le Mans win since 1957 and the first non-Porsche win since 1980. It got that year’s World Sportscar title double too.
7 Jaguar XJR-15
The Jaguar XJR-9, with Tom Walkinshaw’s prompting, also fed directly into Jaguar’s supercar direction with the ground-breaking limited-edition XJR-15.
It’s fondly remembered for its remarkable one-make race series the Jaguar Intercontinental Challenge, that in 1991 supported Monaco, Silverstone and Spa’s Formula 1 races. Among the series’ ingenious incentives was $1million, claimed by Armin Hahne, for winning the Spa race.
8 Jaguar XJR-11
The ever-vigilant Tom Walkinshaw concluded, even after Jaguar’s conquering
1988, that the XJR-9’s seven-litre V12 engine needed replacing with a compact turbocharged unit.
The result was the XJR-11, its engine developed from the evocative Group B Metro 6R4’s. The XJR-11 took pole on its debut, and was competitive even against the classic Mercedes C11, though poor reliability denied it better results.
9 Jaguar XJR-14
The Jaguar XJR-14 is one of very few cars that moved a formula forward and left all rivals gasping.
For World Sportscars’ new-for-1991 3.5litre engine regulations, no less a figure than Ross Brawn created ‘an F1 car with bodywork’; the XJR-14 producing stunning downforce. On its Suzuka debut it qualified 2.5 seconds clear of the rest.
10 Jaguar R4
Formula 1 proved tougher for Jaguar, with a bloated early 2000s Ford-led effort. But come 2003 a slimmed-down squad rose to respectability with driver Mark Webber a regular factor near the front.
In Brazil he missed pole by just 0.044 seconds, while in Hungary he started third and ran second through the opening stint. Eighteen points that year was the team’s clear high-tide watermark, and the outfit also provided the foundations for Red Bull’s F1 juggernaut.