Vintage Snapshot: Off To The Races #2 – Jag Towmobile
– Posted on November 19, 2018
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“I should have checked that 13th tire before leaving!”
Nice Jag, The race car looks like something out of my favorite car-cartoon……..Speed Racer!!
I’ll bet that this was a white knuckle ride even before the flat tire.
Car on the trailer is probably a Lotus 15.
So what would the modern-day equivalent to this be? A Viper pulling a Viper?
A Jag XKR pulling some incredibly light trackday car or maybe an LMP2, if they’re still called that. Things don’t weigh what they used to.
Nowadays the tow vehicle would be a 4WD F-350.
At least that’s a Jag who won’t end stretched like the E-Type shown in the French movie “Le Petit Baigneur”.
Now that’s a setup for the gentleman racer.
Ah yes I can picture myself in this scene, changing the wheel on my Jag while Mrs DougD pushes her cat’s eye sunglasses to the top of her head to take the picture…
In reality I think the only vehicle I can afford in this photo is the trailer 🙂 and if my sports car racing is anything like my motorcycle riding I would be the slowest one on the track. Fun to think about for a minute though…
Louis de Fùnes has never been great humor!
I like to imagine that one of this guy’s opponents at the track is towing a Cobra there with his Cadillac.
Or Corvette!!!
I was referencing the song “Hey Little Cobra”, the opening lines of which are:
“I took my Cobra down to the track,
Hooked to the back of my Cadillac.”
Hello up there, can you hear me?
Some news from the CC-induced rabbit hole. Look what I found!
The towcar is a an XK140 with “C-type” heads. The racer is a Lotus 15, that was raced at LeMans in 1959, entered by Lotus and driven by the owner, one Derek Jolly, who was driving with no less than Graham Hill. It ran for 10 hours as high as seventh, before, well, being a Lotus and stopping.
Jolly was indeed from money, being a scion of the Penfold family of Penfolds Wines in South Australia. (Wine nuts here will likely know of world-renowned Penfolds Grange: a bottle from the 1951 vintage last went for about $30K U.S.) Jolly was a friend of Colin Chapman’s, and later involved in the arts scene in Aus, so wine afficianado, car lover, raconteur, arts supporter – yes, I’m willing to call him a gentleman. And he raced, and well.
Here, the car was in country NSW, Aus (call it the outback, if you like) in 1960 on the way to a country racing circuit at a place called Gnoo Blas. No, really. In the same state where the cities of Wagga Wagga and Woy Woy are located, but I digress.
Jolly crashed the car badly in 1958 at the road circuit still used for Australian F1 Grand Prix today, in Melbourne. He was chasing Aston DBR3’s and a Maserati 300S and Jag D-type, (in a race won by Stirling Moss). In skulduggery very like the type associated with Chapman, the thing was rebuilt at the factory almost entirely and re-numbered (or not), and is known to be really two cars. It’s the second incarnation that was at LeMans and seen in this photo.
Anyway, in either 1.5 or 2.5 engined form, this featherweight thing was brutally fast, fully competitive with the more famed D-types, etc, from the era. Only, being a Lotus, not so hot on reliability.
I can hear the Albert Park race when they close the streets and race around the lake there each year. It’s about 2 miles from here as the crow flies, about the same from downtown. It’s like a massive swarm of nasty, tone-deaf mosquitoes.
These Coventry-Climax engines, not to mention Jags or Masers, they sounded like ripping fabric, or opera or a multi-engined radial plane. There is no comparison. But there will never again be a comparison to the beauty, colour, fable and danger of those fabulous fifties racers, men and machines both.
I live now, ofcourse. But thanks for the reveries, PN.
https://primotipo.com/2017/11/09/dereks-deccas-and-lotus-15s/
Thank you, Justy!
Most excellent background!
So when are you going to join the CC Contributor’s Club? Find some interesting old vintage shots and add your superlative commentary. You’ve been doing it already, minus the shots. 🙂
I tried once. Two blockages. One, it was when the site was still glitchy, lots of Peugeot-numbered error messages. Two, very frankly, I was too thick to follow the instructions – we all have our weaknesses, mine is things with screens and buttons – so I stopped. But I recall you saying you’ve simplified instructions somewhat now, and the site doesn’t wobble about any more, so I will look again.
After all, “superlative” is amusing, but it tickles the ego enough to at least try!
And here I was going to say that it looked like a South Australian number plate on the Lotus!
With a Coventry Climax engine the Lotus would weigh a little over 1000 lb, lighter than the cast iron alternatives, eg Ford. The Jaguar is effectively a shortened sedan chassis with a different body, so no concerns about towing so little weight. The trailer would be pretty light too – a friend had one about 400 lb to tow his 1500 lb race car and it looked more substantial than this.
I think I read a story about Innes Ireland towing a Ford GT40 across Europe to a race behind an Aston Martin DB6 (might have been 4 or 5), at 100 mph! Racing drivers are a different breed…
Many thanks for including the link Justy – lots of good reading for a Lotus fan like me.