Judicious tuning bumped power from the 120's 160 hp to around 200 hp - later C-Types would produce as much as 260 - and, free of carpets, a windshield, or other creature comforts, weight dropped to around 2100 pounds. If Sayer's name sounds familiar, it's because he would later pen Jaguar's legendary D-Type, E-Type, XJ-13 and XJ-S. The driveline was shoehorned into a tubular steel frame, and everything was cloaked in a Malcom Sayer-designed, hand-beaten aluminum body. The four-speed transmission, independent torsion-bar front suspension, and 3.4-liter, twin-cam straight six were borrowed from the XK-120. Over the next decade, Jaguar would win Le Mans five times.Īs racing cars go, the C-Type's guts were relatively ordinary. Three C-Types started the French endurance classic in 1951, and while only one finished, it did so in first place, a whopping 77 miles ahead of the next closest car. The tube-framed pinup that appeared on the Le Mans grid one year later was dubbed the XK-120C, for Competition, or C-Type for short. Starting with little more than an XK-120's driveline and a clean sheet of paper, Heynes drew a tour de force. The car is the closest thing we will ever create to something that is alive.
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