HISTORY
It was 70 years ago that Jaguar’s landmark Le Mans victory with the C-Type consolidated its position as the team to beat in endurance racing. We explain how the race unfolded and its impact on the company
JAGUAR HAD a lot toprove at the 1953 24 Hours of Le Mans. After dominating the 1951 race in its first victory, the C-Type had been comprehensively re-engineered for the following year to include a lower nose and elongated tail, resulting in a pronounced lift at speed. A new cooling system also caused the engine to overheat and despite last-minute alterations to the radiators on two of the cars, all three of Jaguar’s entrants retired.
“It was an unmitigated Jaguar disaster,” was how Stirling Moss described the outcome three decades later in his 1987 autobiography, My Cars, My Career.
Wanting to prove 1951 wasn’t a fluke, for the 1953 race the C-Type was returned to the original design but the body was now made from a lighter gauge of aluminium.
There were also aircraft-style bag fuel tanks, redesigned rear suspension incorporating a Panhard rod and a second pair of trailing links, a lightweight battery plus Dunlop disc brakes.
Jaguar entered three C-Types that would be driven by its familiar and experienced roster of drivers that included: No.17 Stirling Moss and Peter Walker (XKC053) No. 18 Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt (XKC051) No. 19 Ian Stewart and Peter Whitehead (XKC052) The company also took a spare (XKC012) plus a standard example, XKC047, for the Belgian privateer team Ecurie Francorchamps that would be piloted by Roger Laurent and Charles de Tornaco.
Despite the debacle resulting from the changes made to the car in the previous year, Jaguar still felt confident leading up to the 1953 race. “Our test programme had been very thorough indeed this time,” said Jaguar’s competition manager, Frank ‘Lofty’ England, in Andrew Whyte’s 1982 book, Jaguar Sports Racing & Works Competition Cars to 1953, “and we had been able to compare the new lightweight cars backto-back with the standard Belgian one.
We had enough spare cars to make a reliable last-minute switch to the heavier type if need be. MIRA [the Motor Industry Research Association’s proving ground near Nuneaton] now had its banking and we could sustain high speeds we had not been able to before. There was no need to discard the new cars; they went well, especially in the upper-middle rev range.”
This confidence was justified when the works C-Types were immediately quick in practice, Duncan Hamilton’s especially. “From the beginning, the cars went wonderfully well, no. 18 quite a bit faster than the others,” he said in his 1960 autobiography, Touch Wood. Hamilton even set an unofficial record for the course on the Thursday evening, lapping at 110mph, a full second faster than Jaguar’s main rival that year, the Ferrari 3
