CLASSIC DRIVE
Lynx’s Jaguar replicas have become almost as collectable as the real thing. After sampling one, we find out just why
DUE TO their accuracy and the fact the real thing is usally expensive some examples of fake artwork have become highly soughtafter and therefore expensive. For example, in 2021 a copy of Leonardo’s famed masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, sold for an incredible $3.4m. The auction house that sold it, Christie’s, said the replica, “is not as compelling as the work in the Louvre but it conjures something of that world and, in a world of images, in which only the strongest ones stay in our mind, allows the dream to go on.” become almost as collectable as the real thing.
Yet when Guy Black started the Sussexbased company 55 years ago, he never had any intention of producing replicas. The former R&D engineer at Weslake simply wanted to restore classic cars, calling his burgeoning company Lynx after a Riley he was working on at the time.
It was the restoration of a C-Type in the early Seventies that was quickly followed by others that led Lynx to become one of the doing a whole string of them,” said former Lynx director, Chris Keith-Lucas, in the March 1990 issue of Motor Sport magazine.
Their expertise perhaps naturally led to the company producing an allaluminium replica of the 1956 Le Mans winning long-nose D-Type which was revealed at the 1974 Racing Car Show at Olympia. Not only did it look physically identical to the original but it used much of the running gear of an E-Type meaning unlike many fakes that used a variety of incorrect running gear, it had the right pedigree too. The only major change was the use of the latter’s independent rear suspension rather than the solid live axle of the original.
“We are in the unique position to manufacture the most authentic possible reproduction of the ‘D’ Type Jaguar,” said a single page flyer from Lynx in the late 1970s, “as our restoration department’s main work is the restoration and maintenance of the original cars.”
But the kind of accuracy that Lynx managed to achieve came at a cost. At £18,500 (excluding VAT) in 1979, it made the Lynx D-Type four grand more expensive than a brand new Jaguar XJ-S. e esp e epr ce, ue o sreputation for accuracy and for being considerably cheaper than one of the 87 surviving originals, over the next two decades Lynx built 53 examples which included nine in finless XKSS form.
Thanks to their perfect lines and flawless heritage paired with the Jaguar running gear and aluminium body, these Lynx-built D-Types (plus its C-Type replica that arrived a few years later) ar
