Description
Author: Chris Harvey, Hardbound, 208 Pages, ISBN: 0850453232, 1st Edition, 1979 - Second-Hand book in good order !
It is nearly twenty years since a Jaguar won a major international sports car motor race, yet it is still the name which most people recall when they wish to associate the greatness of British motor racing with a particular car. And it is not without good reason,
even though the company never won the Sports Car Constructors' Championship and never produced a single seater formula car.
It is to the nineteen-fifties that one must look for the start of the real success; the pre-war SS Jaguars were, of course, most proficient both on the track and on the rally road, in post-war austerity of Britain Jaguar alone shone as the great "green" motor racing hope with their XKizo. They didn't win everything, but they appeared to. Then came the Le Mans victory with the C type, followed by more and more victories with the world's favourite, the D type.
Meanwhile other races and rallies were falling beneath the Jaguars' wheels. Already the legend was made.
The E type continued on its winning way, as did the graceful Mk I and 2 saloons. Then there was the European Touring Car Championship onslaught by Leyland's Jaguar X J5 .3C Viz-a magnificent but unsuccessful attempt - and the X J-S's run of wins in American SCCA racing. Backing all the international efforts has been a constant wave of Jaguars in club events throughout the world. And one should not forget that the X K engine has carried numerous other chassis to victory - the Lister, Cooper and Tojiero to start with.
This book attempts to commemorate that "grace, space and pace" which the Jaguar has given the world. It is a book of highlights, of great moments, of victory; at the same time, it is a readable history of the competition Jaguar. Over 80 photographs, many of them never previously published, others used because of their classic quality, illustrate the infinite variety of the marque. Whatever else, they all confirm the justification of that special place which the legendary Jaguar occupies.
Contemporary colour photographs of the great days of Jaguar raciig are very hard blind. Fortunately veteran photographer Tom March came to the rescue. Bothjacket shots are of a youthful Stirling Moss at Silverstone. The dark blue C Type was taken during the 1513 Daily Express Trophy Meeting sports car race. Records show that Moss was sidelined -Hawthorn's factory Ferrari won, Tom Cole's private Ferrari was second and Walker in another work's C type was third.
About the author
Christopher Arnold Harvey was born in Norwich in 1941, checking out of the nursing home with his mother minutes before a bomb dropped on it. He's been on the run ever since from the bank manager, accountant, insurance man and anybody else it's possible to owe money to.
To finance his riotous life-style and enormous appetite for Greek food, he has spent twenty years in Fleet Street working for all sorts of newspapers, editing magazines and writing scripts. At the advanced age of thirty-five he was made redundant by a Sunday newspaper, and it was then that he decided to start writing books under his own name on his first love sports and racing cars.
He has now written several such books and contributes regularly to magazines such as CAR, Cart and Car Conversions and Thoroughbred and Gassic Car. In a short space of time he has become recognized as something of an expert in his field.
His frantic life drives him to over 5o,000 miles a year, in a variety of British sports cars, from his home in Brighton where he lives with his wife, three teenage children, a violent dog and some goldfish.
