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Presents another marvellous Jaguar racing car, the Jaguar XJR-5 Group 44 ... called the Howling Cat!
A high-powered Jaguar which was very competitive in the IMSA GTP and FIA World Championship and known by it's Kevlar body and V12 engine.
This car is an important piece of Jaguar and sports car racing history.
In the high-powered world of 1980s sports car racing, it was hard to stand out. It was a decade with Porsche written all over it, and venerable old Jaguar was one of the very few carmakers to break through that German dominance.
Highlights of Coventry’s return to racing greatness came with wins at Le Mans in 1988 and 1990, but it was this car, the XJR-5, that really got the ball rolling. In the early ’80s, Bob Tullius of Group 44 was on the hunt for a new car to campaign while Jaguar was looking to add some fresh credentials to its performance image. A meeting in Coventry brought the two names back together and resulted in a plan to build a sports prototype that would be competitive in both IMSA GTP and FIA World Championship racing.
The XJR-5, as it came to be known, featured a Lee Dykstra-designed chassis and Kevlar body with ground effect tunnels underneath, and under the engine cover was a 5.3 liter version (it would eventually grow to 6.0 liters) of Jaguar’s long and narrow V-12, in this case topped by six Weber carburetors were good for an estimated 625 horsepower.
Group 44 built the car for IMSA GTP and this example is number 001, the first XJR-5 and the car driven by Tullius himself in 1982 and 1983. 001 Took third in its very first race at Road America in 1982 and finished first overall at Road Atlanta and second overall at Laguna Seca in 1983.
More examples would be built, and of course subsequent Jaguar prototypes would carry on the fight in international sports car racing, but this car will always remain the starting point of Jaguar’s long-awaited return to international motorsports.
THE OTHER JAGUARS ARE HERE:
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