The mythical Jaguar XJ13

[lowdrag]

I needn't go on about this car since I guess we all know about it and it's history - but I will nevertheless! Built by "The Saturday Club", a group of Jaguar engineers who gathered together in their spare time to create , if you like, a Mk 2 D type to reincarnate Jaguar's glorious racing years. Mid-engined, lightweight monocoque chassis, 5 liter quad-cam engine, a veritable tour-de-force of engineering excellence in its day. Of course, regulation changes meant it could never race so it has slumbered quietly in the museum, being used for exhibitions and once in a while doing a demonstration tour of a circuit. It is mythical, and so is its value - it is insured by the museum for $12 million at current exchange rates. I am proud to have driven the original - if only in second gear around the factory!





But there are those out there who long to recreate the car and one was built by Walter Hill of Florida and he obtained one of the seven engines ever built but - the shape wasn't quite correct and it doesn't look right. Kits are available in America to build a copy using the 5.3 liter twin cam E-type engine, but even so you are on the thick end of $200,000 fully built. So, for most of us, the thought of owning such a car remains a myth.

Step up to the plate one Jürgen Locke from Germany. A 60 year old mechanic and panel beater, he too was one of the many who dreamed, but then he was and is a practical dreamer. He decided to build one himself; no he didn't buy the kit, he really has built one from scratch!

You start by creating a big work bench, buying some tubular steel and setting to work bending it:-



Bit by bit, having carefully measured your engine, the chassis takes shape:-



Carefully, you put the engine in your constructed chassis:-



Now what about suspension? Well, take off the shelf some other Jaguar parts and - hey presto!



After a while, you have a rolling chassis and, boy, does it look mean!:-



So you've got this far, and many I am sure could easily have done it although as you know, I'm more a writer than a hands-on mechanic sadly. But creating the body shell? Now that most of us would contract out to a more gifted person. Not Jürgen! He made his own wooden buck:-





So, having a lot of sheet steel at a cheap price, he decided to make the body himself:-







Here it is primered up, and he even went to the lengths of making the windshield and A-posts too:-



Air vent now cut into the hood:-




This is now the current state, but more will be published as he gets further. He is determined that the car will run this year though. Finally, just to while away the winter months, he rebuilt a spare Jaguar V12 engine which adorns his study:-



I think we must all stand and applaud this gentleman, now 65 years of age, for his tenacity and skill. Bravo Jürgen!

Edited by lowdrag on Monday 22 March 08:13

Edited by lowdrag on Monday 22 March 08:15

[lowdrag]

I think you are getting confused with the XK120 coupé that set speed records on the Montlhery track at Paris in 1952, registered LWK 707. That was crashed at the Festival of Speed in 2008. As said, the XJ13 was involved in an horrific accident in 1971 at MIRA when the N/S rear wheel collapsed (not the tyre) with Norman Dewis at the wheel.

[lowdrag]

NevSwales said:

It seems that Jaguar were perhaps not completely logical in their identification of engine blocks used in prototype engines - like Jaguar Heritage themselves, I had assumed that a block stamped ''3'' would logically belong to ''engine number 3'' etc. According to Peter Wilson who worked in the Jaguar Competitions Department at the time, this may not have been a valid assumption. If so, my engine may have had a much more interesting, important and varied life than I first thought - I will publish details on http://www.xj13.eu when I am certain of the facts - watch this space!

Anything is possible where Jaguars are concerned Neville. A friend sold a very early outside lock E-type but when the new owner took it apart to rebuild it as a concours car the shell was certainly earlier than the chassis number would indicate; in fact probably one of the first five chassis built looking at the bare shell. My E-type, a flat floor of October 1961, has an XK150 distributor, not an E-type one for example. Jaguar used parts as they were available, that's all. It doesn't surprise me that your engine wasn't, in the end, the third engine built even though the block is the 3rd. It probably sat on the shelf for a while.

[lowdrag]

No, but I had news at the weekend of a wreck perhaps for sale of a Mk 1 with the number VDU 883. Now that is rare - one of the original Racing Mk1 cars and two numbers away from the Hawthorn car.

[lowdrag]

Seems your distributor has been changed at some time in its life Neville since that wouldn't have been on there originally. Yes jith, mine has the brass fine tuning knob.