The Jaguar C-Type won Le Mans two times, once with a drunken and injured Duncan Hamilton behind the wheel. The Jaguar D-Type and its aerodynamic fin, on the other hand, won it three times. The car we’ll be talking about today is chassis XKD 501.
With this car, Scottish motor racing team Ecurie Ecosse claimed the overall win in the 1956 edition of the world's greatest endurance. The drivers that made it possible are Ron Flockhart and Ninian Sanderson. Since that seminal moment in 1956, XKD 501 went through two owners. After 16 years in the same caring hands, the third and current owner decided to sell it.
Slated to go under the hammer at RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction, XKD 501 is the only Le Mans-winning C- or D-Type that still retains its original condition. There’s no estimate available on this retro racecar at the present moment, but the first team-series production D-Type designated by its chassis as a D-Type could bring a world record auction price.
RM Auctions sold XKD 520 for $4,996,248 in 2014, which is a lot of money considering that XKD 520 doesn’t boast with the same motorsport achievements as XKD 501. Oh, and another thing. XKD 501 didn’t just one-up three works-specification D-Type race cars with fuel injection, but it finished the race with a seven-lap lead on a Ferrari 625 LM Spider and ahead of Stirling Moss in his Aston Martin DB3S. How about that for racing pedigree?
In total, XKD 501 covered 2,507.19 miles (4,034.93 km) at the 1956 24 Hours of Le Mans. An average of 104.47 mph (168.12 km/h) is huge for a car developed and raced in the 1950s. But will XKD 501 surpass a C-Type that sold for $13.2 million at last year’s Monterey auction? More than that, will it surpass the $13.75 million McLaren F1 LM sold at the same venue to become the most expensive British car ever to sell at auction? Chances are it will.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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