There's Now A Second Jaguar XJ13 (Sort Of)

The Jaguar XJ13 should have been one of the legendary Le Mans racers of the 1960s, trading blows with the likes of the Ford GT40 and Ferrari 330 P4 at the famous endurance race. Instead, the whole project was cancelled in 1966 after a regulation change rendered it illegal before it could ever race.

Only one car was built and since then, it’s been owned by Jaguar. It was crashed in 1971, rebuilt, and has since been brought out as a showstopper at events like the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Nobody’s quite sure how much it’s worth, but supposedly, someone tried to buy it for £7 million in 1996 and was turned down by Jag.

Now, though, 60 years after the project began, there’s another one - or at least as close as we’ll get without travelling back to 1966 and stopping the Le Mans organisers from limiting prototype cars to 3.0-litre engines.

This is the JD Classics “True Spirit of XJ13” - yes, that appears to be its real name - and it’s a faithful recreation of the original, built with Jaguar’s blessing.

This car’s origins can be traced all the way back to an XJ13 replica built in the 1980s by Bryan Wingfield, an engineer who in his later career, specialised in replicas of Ford GT40s and Jag’s 1950s Le Mans racers. His XJ13 replica was owned by an American Jaguar collector named Walter Hill and was occasionally displayed by Jaguar North America.

It was later acquired by JD Classics, who specialise in the sale and restoration of valuable retros but have a particular focus on Jaguar. To create the “True Spirit of XJ13”, they meticulously 3D-scanned the original car, and from that scan, created a buck over which aluminium panels could be hand-beaten. That means that everything down to the spacing of the rivets in the body is as close as possible to the original.

The engine is not only faithful to the existing car but was actually intended for it: JD managed to secure the only other known existing example of the XJ13’s 5.0-litre, quad-cam V12.

There is one difference: the XJ13’s chassis engineer, Derrick White, originally designed it to have an independent rear suspension setup, which had to be shelved for cost reasons. JD has managed to fit it with the suspension setup it was intended to have, so it should, in theory, outdrive the original.

The “True Spirit of XJ13” will be on display at the upcoming Retromobile Paris show, but what JD plans to do with it after that isn’t clear - presumably, it’ll do the rounds on the international show circuit. There’s also always the chance they might sell it later down the line.

We’re in two minds over this car. It’s undoubtedly a delight to have another example of this beautiful machine in the world but does its existence make that mythical, one-of-one original just that little bit less special?