Jaguar's One-Off GT40 KILLER - The Jaguar XJ13 Race Car 

Should've included the sound of it being driven

that is quite literally an e-type supercar... absolutely stunning, they should've built the 50 just on that alone. such an elegantly gorgeous automobile.

One of the most beautiful cars ever made, and my all time favourite. 👍

A couple of corrections; the work actually began in 1962, engine testing began in 64. Jaguar first looked at a V12 unit way back in the very early Fifties, and a while later there was a wooden block with a couple of XK heads on top at one point. This, along with the company working on the Meteor tank engine, possibly helped fuel the rumours of Jaguar developing a V12 for many years before the XJ13 programme. But anyway, the actual 'proper' V12 was a clean sheet and not a couple of XK units. Finally, the engines were originally developed using Lucas fuel injection, the use of carbs came a little later during development.

The engine of the XJ13 is not based on two XJ6 engines on a common crank case. It's an entirely new engine. The valves are on a much narrower included angle, and the inlet ports pass between the two cams. A small number of prototype 4-cam engines were made for testing, but only two are known to exist. One is in the car. Another one appeared on German E-bay a few years ago, and is now in a replica XJ13 car built by Neville Swales.

They never got 550hp out of it, I think it went to a bit over 500 but 550 was considered quite doable. Norman Dewis was ordered to keep the car at a reasonably low speed as the engineers were wary of the condition of the wheels and tires. It had laid dormant for some years. However, Norman wanted to break the unofficial MIRA record set by David Hobbs (a Jaguar apprentice) some years earlier in the car and thus the disaster unfolded. The engine was okay but was following a dead end in head design with the inlet ports entering between the camshafts, if memory serves early Lamborgini engines also used this design. Initially, the ports were too straight and the engine had insufficient swirl and tumble. They built 5 engines for the car - they were all different, at least one utilized an open deck design. The car became a test bed. Some of the engines were also run in Mk10 Jaguar road cars with carbies to test their suitability for road use. I will cut it short. if you want to hear the car, here is a link to a video a few seconds before the XJ13 is featured, but I recommend you watch this hour long video from the start. It is the Jaguar episode from the "Victory By Design" series with Alain de Cadenet, a Le Mans racer who did 15 seasons. After a while, you will wonder how they managed to get hold of all those impossibly rare cars (spoiler, he drives more than one Le Mans winning car, and I mean DRIVE! And then wonder even more how he was game to push these irreplaceable cars so hard. What becomes clear early on is how fantastic a highly tuned XK engine sounds and it just gets better when he hits the 12s, even the XJ220C sounds pretty good. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DRoNxWRm-kQ.html There are a few other episodes and highlights on youtube but get the series on video if you can , it will blow you away, and yes he does American rarities as well.

My brother built a high end replica of this... sort of. It's a carbon fiber body, on an all-out Aluminum race tub. Fir example it sports 6 piston front brakes with provisions for a 2nd set of calipers. 12 piston brakes at each wheel seems... excessive, especially with a mild build of Jaguars 5.3l V-12 (say, 450-ish HP, but torque is 430 lb/feet on a 1700 pound w/fluids racer. Also that engine is bulletproof, and looks sick with12 throttle bodies and polished velocity stacks. He shows it occasionally in Richmond VA area. Love that he got Norman Dewis to sign a piece of metal when he met him in 2018, and has it on the car. Norman is the guy who flipped the original car in 1971 at the MIRA high-speed circuit while filming to promote the new V-12 E-type.

Why is it that Americans can't pronounce Jaguar properly? Not 1 second of the amazing noise this beautiful machine makes?

Thank you for describing the engine as being two straight-sixes 'mated to a common crankshaft.' So many idiots say 'welded together' thinking they're being clever or funny; or even just say it without thinking. It is the mark of quality to describe things sensibly.

I have a 1/18 XJ13 in my small car model collection. It is simply beautiful

Never loved the "love it or hate it" E-type, but THIS here was a clean machine with gorgious looks.

For those who have followed the XJ13 vs GT40 debate, Norman Swales has extracted some information from the Heritage Trust paperwork on this very issue. In 1966, Jaguar managed to obtain a GT40, albeit a road version, From Ford Advance Vehicles to do some comparisons. An interesting situation, you would have thought that would have been the last thing Ford would have wanted to do. There are also Silverstone lap times for XJ13 and these are compared to the best contemporary GT40 times. It appears the car was more competitive than I thought and Jaguar was confident they could have significantly reduced the prototypé's weight to make it more competitive. I find this interesting as it is usually the other way around, with later cars getting heavier. Mind you the crash showed just how strong the chassis was, it was still straight to within a few millimeters, despite being rolled and flipped, so obviously overbuilt, to Colin Chapman, it would have been massively overbuilt. It must have been one of a few if not the only car using a full monocoque with stressed engine at the time, but i have not checked this, so I could be wrong. Unfortunately, the V12 would have been limited to about 550hp (that bloody downdraft porting), and at the time the Jaguar racing department was very small, and Bill Lyons was trying to sell the company to the dark side, a very sad outcome. Downdraft porting was really a dead end, the game changed completely with Harry Westlake closely followed by Keith Duckworth. Four-valve heads were back in, and finally, with a rough idea of how important squish is, the modern combustion chamber came into existence. Also, this blog clearly identified that the crash was caused by a plugged tire (apparently It had a slow leak) failing after Norman Dewis ignored instructions about keeping the speed down. The link to the XJ13/GT40 evaluation: buildingthelegend.co.uk/1966-le-mans-ford-vs-ferrari-vs-jaguar

Always looked like a very happy little car! You need vehicle sounds. Pause the yapping once in a while and let us hear the cars.

What a work of art

One of Jaguar’s finest efforts, doff’s cap, well done indeed ✌️🇺🇸

My favorite car from the 60s. I read that the rims were obtained and made from castings for the development aircraft for the SST. There is a fiberglass kit car being made for this as well, called the RCR XJ13.

Gorgeous. Would Love to have heard it.

FFS it's jagUar not jagWar!

Awesome documentary! + 1 New Subscriber!

In 1965 one of the four original V12 engines was shoehorned into one of the unregistered XJ5 saloons that we had in the Browns Lane Experimental Department in the mid 1960s. The engine had a shallow fabricated wet sump and the exhaust manifolds were flame cut from steel plate and mated to a standard exhaust system, The V12 was mated to the standard 4 speed all synchro gearbox and the standard 3.31 differential. I drove this car several times and on the M1 motorway had much joy leaving the products of Newport Pagnall blowing smoke way behind in their attemps to keep up. Through the timing lights on the MIRA No1 banked circuit and into the banking at the end of the railway straigh we calculated its speed before braking at 149 mph via the calibrated Smits rev counter at 6,350 RPM....we had seen 6,500 rpm on the M1. Cavitation in the fabricated wet sump put an end to that session of testing.

About the Ford GT40; the US made (LA-based Holman-Moody built all the 7.0L Mk2`s) Mk2 was equipped with Fords 427R 7.0L raceengine, oficcialy hp-numbers was 485hp at 6200rpm witch was true enough. But the true shiftpoints was at 7400rpms where it made "a bit more" even with a midrise intake as in the GT40

Reminds me of the secret racer called Melange in an episode of speed Racer its shape the color the engine layout The animators lifted story lines & car styles straight from the era the Mach 5 & Racer X cars both from earlier Ferrari's

You are such an expert that at 0.06 while you talk about Jaguars you place a Blue Lamborghini 350 GT! OMG!

I saw a replica of one of these in Adelaide Australia formula 1gp in late 80s sounded great. But racing at our local hill climbs I can't help but remember another rare race car of this era the "Healey lemans" super cool

It looks gorgeous especially the grills😊

Thanks. A car I've never heard of.

I recall seeing that car in some old auto mag in the 80s. IMO it remains one of the most beautiful race cars I’ve ever seen. It was held in very high regard at the time in 1966, but became a stillborn project, Ferrari vs Ford vs Jaguar showdown on the worlds sport sportscar championship wouldve brought the house down. Nevermind the Golden age of motor racing it wouldve been the Platinum age, what a pity.

Take a deep breath - and say Jag - u- ar. I don't know what a Jaaaaggwaaar is!

Stew Jones Jaguar in Winsted, CT has a customer's tribute car in his shop.

My favourite car ever ever... beautiful.

It's pronounced jag you are. It's English, not Mexican.

Just STUNNING

Cool video

beautiful

1st ive heard of this and im a car nut. Good job. Now L88 aluminum 427 corvette or the 1 big block 65 chevelle or ...

What a gorgeous car.....!

The one and only car Jaguar ever made that actually looks good! Wish we could’ve heard it in your video…

A beautiful car, amazing, thanks, it would have been nice to hear the engine

WOW fucking beautiful

Looks like they never heard of flush riveting, all those rivets detract from appearance and adds drag.

Had Jaguar gone through with the racing program, the XJ13 would have made a gorgeous longtail coupe for Le Mans...

Could Jaguar make a Jaguar look better than an E type? Heck yes

There are some claims the engine was the also the prototype for the later v12 that found it's way into the XJ-12 but the DOHC configuration was too wide to fit into the engine bay so the Dual Overheads were ditched in favor of a SOHC layout.

Um dos carros mais belos já concebidos pelo ser humano.

Nice video although the history is missing a bit. Jaguar had already won Le Mans five times before building this car.

I swear a car that looked like that was atvthe auction in Pebble Beach some years ago at the main convention center.

THAT JAGUAR COULD NEVER DEFEAT ANY GENERATION OF THE FORD GT CARS !!!!

So GT40 killer is not really an accurate description for this car.

Beautiful car. Too bad it never went forward... imagine what we'd have today.

bloody hell ; how many times are you going to say JAG-U-AR wrong !

A: "I ran over your dog" B: "Oh nooo!! :(" A: "In my Jaaaaaag" B: "oh, thats okay then"

Looks like a second gen ( if they made one) XKSS

The GT40 wasn't a Ford. It was a Lola MK6 with a truck engine.

Pretty sure there's an XJ13 kit car out there, so if you want one get googling

Whats up with all these cars that were built to chase down the GT 40 and the AC Cobra?? Its almost like Carrol Shelby was the best all around.

But it leaked too much oil and they could never seem to find where it was coming from. (Although… totally cool looking)

I dont get it, how is it reasonable, in a 'prototype' class, that the manufacturer must have 50 road going versions to qualify for racing? If there are 50 road going versions then it's NOT a prototype!

Beautiful Car that never raced, so no, it's not a GT40 killer. Neither was the Cheetah. Too funny.

Certainly was a quiet engine. (sarc.) Was there some sort of embargo on playing the sound.? A wasted opportunity.

I saw this running and yup maybe, it could have been and it wasn’t a fücking Jagwaaaaar! The FISA Rules for racing categories were world wide and stringent for many forms such as Sportscar, it was called Homologation and the design had to include provision for one passenger and a spare wheel, following early forms of car racing from the early 1900s when the French controlled the sport.

yeop, I'm gonna be that guy.. it's pronounced "porshuh"!

That was not a Gemballa Avalanche

GT40 killer is a bit rich.. it was unbelievably unstable at high speeds.

In fact the e type looks better than the 13

You know., Sherlock does not know everything, particularly in video editing.

Should have been called the XJ12 - then it wouldn't have been so unlucky!

I believe the crash was caused by one of the Magnesium wheels coming apart.

This car exists in grand theft auto online.

“GT-40 killer”. Lmao

This is serious car porn. 5 out of 5

You got to learn how to pronounce Jag-U-are..that how its pronounced.. It is not a Jag-wharr

If you don't mind 1:1 replicas, you can find British built decent quality firms manufacturing these.

Imagine this in a kit car with an LS engine from Chevy. Wowzers!

the real XJ13 was a 4 cam v8 = not the single overhead cam = like your showing ! = yo !

Litty

Jag😊

Incredibly sexy looking machine 😅

Stunning car, now you just need to learn how to pronounce 'Jagwaaaar.'

🤙

WHY YOU COMPAIR EVERYTHING TO THE GT40?

Fools should've mass produced it in a street version. Screw the racing! It was Malcolm Sayer's masterpiece: the superlative sculpture on wheels.

Grill looks like a catfish mouth, and this particular thumbnail angle of the car made it look ugly unfortunately

Curse you,, No Glorious soundtrack?? Drats and triple Drats 🤬🤬🤬😄

Beautiful car.. Too bad

I think this vid, whilst very good, mistakes sports cars with grand tourers. If think in a list of 60’s iconic cars the E type is up there with all the others.

It’s spelt Jaguar, it’s also pronounced jaguar. Not “jagwaaar”. The same hold true for dual. It’s not pronounced “dooool”.😒

A clip from another "Victory by Design" episode, an American car, not really all that rare, but... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tXnh2CRQCbc.html

What is a jagwaar😂

I’m sure it was great in the rain and for headless drivers.

Probably a good thing that it stayed on the porch.

1977 drove a blue Corvair van north with my cat Rip, short for Riptide. July 4th fireworks above night sky. Morning after leaving bright eyed ready for Days, Weeks, months, years, decades. Automobiles are obsolete as we know them today. Whatever Elon Musk says do not believe it.

@Lewis72 -Sorry to disappoint you sir, but there most certainly is an argument to it! The word Jaguar is not even British to begin with. It was taken from the Portuguese and the pronunciation was modified to suit the British, which is a very common practice. The Americans did the same thing. For the record, the name specifically refers to the animal - hence the Jaguar hood ornament. More importantly, your own Cambridge Dictionary shows BOTH common pronunciations as correct, NOT just the British! The same is true in the Webster's Dictionary. So please stop trying to convince the world that the Brit pronunciation is the correct, and only one! That is a pure crock of .... 💩. 😁

If you are going to make a video about a car brand, it helps if you can actually pronounce the brands name: It is NOT "Jag-WAAAAAAAAAAAAH". It's Jag-U-Ar Not difficult is it? The clues in the name

I'll have 2 if you'll take my mk2 in part ex! LOL

Possibly the most beautiful car ever. Thankyou!

I was fortunate enough to have seen this car in the U.S. at an Historic Festival at Lime Rock Park some 8 or ten years back. It was displayed only, never on the track. When I first saw it, I immediately thought it must be a replica but checked it out anyway. To my astonishment, I found out it was the original prototype and checked it out thoroughly. Ferrari and some others have definitely made some exquisite looking cars, but this machine is at the top of the list for the most beautiful looking racing machine ever built. Also, no picture of it has the same impact on you as seeing it in real life does, and that is for damn sure! Simply magnificent!

Its a Jaguar, not a Jagwar! Why do Americans insist on miss pronunciation of the English language?

Please oh please, listen to some British channels so that you can learn how to actually pronounce the word "Jaguar". It is NOT JagWahh!

It's an English car. The pronunciation is Jag-you-are.

Shame on Jaguar for not making at least 50 of these beauties! They would have been the pinnacle of homologation heaven.