1966 Jaguar XJ13

I took this photograph in the paddock at the Christie's International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1992.

There are now several replicas around and the first was built by Proteus in the early 1990s, but I think that this is the original 1966 Jaguar XJ13, the prototype of a car intended to contest the Le Mans 24 Hour race, and has a 4,991cc V12 engine. By the time the car was ready to be introduced, however, it had already been made obsolete by the Ford GT40 and this and the fact that the regulations were soon to be changed to limit engine capacities to 3 litres meant that it was never actually raced. The car was mothballed until it was brought out in 1971 to publicise the launch of the Series 3 Jaguar E-Type which was powered by Jaguar's first production V12 engine. Jaguar test driver Norman Dewis was taking the car on a high speed run on the MIRA test track when a type burst and the car was severely damaged in the resulting crash, although Norman Dewis luckily escaped unharmed. The car was eventually rebuilt in 1973 and is now part of the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust Collection.