When it comes to Jaguar real estate stakes in most people’s brains, the iconic E-Type tends to have the largest and most eye-catching properties. But for those who know, there is an old area so full of motoring charm and history and flowing metal curves that it is worth visiting: the C-Type. Jaguar just announced it will Ramp up new, old C-Types as part of its continuation program. Although I’m never rich enough to pay for one, I spent some time on a C-Type and I can honestly say absolutely deserves this revival.
The original C-Types were built for racing between 1951 and 1953, and Malcolm Sayer’s intuitive aerodynamic shape, if perhaps not mathematically verifiable, is an absolute marvel of what makes mid-century British racing cars so wonderful.
It’s a little car full of curves and cats, the kind of thing you want to get your hands on until the people around you start to feel really uncomfortable and someone who still cares about you whispers that maybe you should already get cold. .
The car is clearly a racing machine, and the interior reflects that absolutely; it’s a simple machine, all metal and exposed parts, and you can see it in Jaguar’s online configurator for cars which, although you choose the color of the leather upholstery, is still a practical experience:
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These new continuation cars are built from archived designs and three-dimensional scans of surviving cars and, while they use modern techniques and methods and tolerances and all that, they are basically the original car.
Jaguar also seems to be going out of style with colors, which is great:
The engine is happily old-school too: it’s 220 horsepower, 3.4 liters in line and six with triple Weber 40DCO3 carbohydrates. Carburetors! In a car being built in 2021! Damn!
The C-Type was one of the first to adopt disc brakes, so these will have these and, unlike the original cars, these will have an optional “FIA approved harness retention system”, which is a major improvement over the one that I co-directed at Mille Miglia a few years ago, when the car owner suggested that I don’t even worry about seat belts, as he figured that just being thrown out of the car would be a better plan.
You can even specify the number of rounds, which makes sense, since most of them will likely be purchased for use on the track and will be eligible for most historic race and track events.
Jaguar has yet to give a price, but other cars in the Jaguar Continuation series tend to sell for between one and three million dollars, which is a huge amount of dollars. If you are loaded and want to buy some kind of crazy and impractical car, why not one of these? Get something carb!
If, like most of us, you are not loaded, the online configurator is free, finally.