Jaguar Magazine – July 2019

EDITION 198 JAGUAR MAGAZINE 83

01 All the same car! New 1987 Silk Cut Jaguar #387 being prepared for Le Mans by Alva Claxton. 02 It finished fifth

outright. 03 Later that year its only victory was at Spa, and it was the last race for #387. 04/05/06 Stripped still in Silk Cut

livery, it is being converted into 1988 Castrol Jaguar #388. 07 Job done. 08 Raul Boesel with the car at its debut in NY.

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02 03

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05 06

07 08

publishes official TWR documents outlining the number of

V12 Silk Cut (and IMSA later) bodies planned at the beginning

of the racing programme in 1985. That is followed by those

actually built and raced to the end of 1990.

There are astonishingly few because the cars were recycled.

That allowed the later creation of clones carrying genuine

chassis numbers. It was simple enough because in the period

TWR built and owned the cars it raced for Jaguar - the only one

which left its control was the 1988 Le Mans winner handed to

Jaguar as part of a pre-arranged agreement if it was victorious.

Those spectacular race cars are not officially Jaguars, but

Jaguar entries. They are Jaguar-powered TWR XJ-Rs and were

adapted by TWR into Nissan-factory backed sports racers.

There were turboed six cylinder Silk Cut Jaguars, and also V8s,

but that's another story.

Having successfully raced its XJ-Ss, Tom Walkinshaw

gained the backing of Jaguar Cars to move his association on

in 1985 to the highly sophisticated Group C World Sports Car

Championship. The cars were TWR's own carbon fibre bodied

Jaguar V12 engined racers. Group 44 in the US, headed by

Bob Tullius, raced his factory-entered IMSA series XJR-5s at

Le Mans in 1984 and '85, but their aluminium cars, with the

same V12, were excluded from any official participation in the

Europe-based series aside from those two events.

According to the records revealed for the first time by Allan

Scott, between 1985 and the end of 1990 TWR built just fifteen

new V12 cars for both the Silk Cut and the Castrol US teams.

In 1988 TWR replaced Group 44 as Jaguar's official US team.

The images on page 83, and 07 here, show a white unidentified

IMSA TWR Jaguar sports racer. Tom Walkinshaw and Jaguar's

US head Mike Dale at TWR's English plant stand beside it.

It is this car which led to our investigation, and we found

it was not new, but #387 renumbered to #388. #387 was fifth

outright at Le Mans in 1987, and won the classic Spa race in

1987 as race car #6. Then #388 was up-dated into chassis #890

• and #1090. As #890 it won the 1990 Daytona 24 Hours, then
  renumbered to #1090 it won Le Mans in 1990! That's one
  significant car with four identities ...