Gallery: Stunning Jaguar D-types at Revival
What is the greatest sports racing car of all time? What is recognised as such, but perhaps shouldn’t be? What goes overlooked when it should probably hold the top spot? We won’t go on some tirade of comparisons but a few marques and models spring to mind.
Ferrari 250 GTO, Ford GT40, McLaren F1 GTR, Porsche 917, Jaguar XJR-9, Audi R8. All and more are titans famed for the impact their successes had on the sport and popular motoring culture as a whole. We’re not here to definitively answer the questions posed in the above introduction (is that even possible?) but you might have clocked a notable absence from our list.
It is as of our celebration of Ecurie Ecosse at Revival, the current front-runner in our minds: The Jaguar D-type.
It ticks all the boxes of a bona-fide game-changer. Power, reliability, revolutionary aerodynamics and braking – all tools that contributed to Le Mans wins through 1955, 1956 and 1957. The latter win perhaps solidified the legend, with Scottish privateers Ecurie Ecosse leading the 1,2,3,4,6 final placing.
A car four years into its career sporting little but incremental improvements, without factory support, sitting atop the podium – it’s pretty much unprecedented even to this day. So consider all of this when you’re picking your all-time great, as well as, obviously, the stunning imagery of the D-types running at Revival in a moment of reflection.
Photography by Tom Shaxson, Nicole Hains, Jochen Van Cauwenberge, Bobby Peters, Richard Pardon, Tony Adamson and Jayson Fong
Revival
Revival 2017
Jaguar
D-Type
2017