1955 Jaguar D-Type

This is a photograph I took just outside the paddock at the Aston Martin Owners Club's meeting at Oulton Park in September 1986.

I don't know what it was doing there, but it's a 1955 Jaguar D-Type with a registration number ending in '....4 RW' and the only D-Type which matches that is XKD505 (774 RW). It doesn't appear to be a replica, so it seems to be the car with which Mike Hawthorn and Ivor Bueb won the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hour Race.

1956 Lotus Eleven

This car competed in the BRDC Historic Sports Car Championship Race at the Gold Cup meeting at Oulton Park in August 2003.

It's the 1956 Lotus Eleven of Neil Davies which the programme of the event says has a 1,480cc engine. The Lotus Eleven was designed by Colin Chapman and the aerodynamic body by Frank Costin and was intended to compete in the 1,100cc sports car class. A Lotus Eleven with a 1,098cc Coventry Climax engine driven by Reg Bicknell and Peter Jopp finished in seventh place in the 1956 Le Mans 24 Hour Race, winning the 1,100cc class. The Lotus Eleven was raced with various other engine sizes up to 1,500cc, and for the 1957 Le Mans 24 Hour Race Coventry Climax produced the 744cc FWC engine that enabled the Lotus Eleven of Cliff Allison and Keith Hall to win the 750cc class, and also the Index of Performance.

The car immediately behind the Lotus is the 1956 Cooper T39 Bobtail of Marshall Bailey that competed (with the number 19) in the Bonhams Drum Brake Sports Car Race. The number 6 car appears to be the 1955 Jaguar D-Type XKD505 that won the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hour Race driven by Mike Hawthorn and Ivor Bueb, but the car isn't listed in any of the races in the programme of this event. Just visible on the right-hand side with the WEB 6 number plate is the 1950 Jaguar XK120 of Nigel Webb.

Jaguar D-Type

This car was in the paddock at the SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2004 promoting a raffle to raise funds to finance a statue to Mike Hawthorn and 'Lofty' England at Goodwood.

'Lofty' England was the manager of the Jaguar team when they won the Le Mans 24 Hour race in 1955 with a Jaguar D-Type driven by Mike Hawthorn and Ivor Bueb. The car above is a Jaguar D-Type with the same registration and race numbers as the car which won that race and looks identical to that car in every way, except for the rather spindly-looking rear view mirror. It apparently has the chassis number of the Le Mans winning car, XKD505, but like the proverbial 50-year old hammer that's had four new handles and 2 new heads bits and pieces of the car have been swapped around and renewed in the intervening years. It looks like the real thing though, and that's the main thing. The statue was commissioned, and eventually unveiled on 17 September 2005.