Jaguar XJ-13

[Matt Bacon]

...'cos they only built one, which crashed and was rebuilt and is now at the Jaguar Heritage Centre. It was originally intended as a Le Mans challenger, and had the car been ready when the engine was, in 1962, then it would have been a pretty strong challenger at that. However, the car was delayed by a couple of years, by which time the rules had changed, and it could no longer be entered. Derivatives of the engine went on to power Jaguar's 12-cylinder saloons for years, but the XJ-13 never raced in anger. Even if it could have, by 1965, it would have been outclassed by opposition.

The kit is a K&R Replicas white metal casting in 1/24. The only additions were to wire the engine with little-cars wires, and some seat belts made from lead foil covered in surgical tape for texture and sprayed with Tamiya Brilliant Blue acrylic.

...and my best effort to reproduce the picture in the inspirational Mike Zumbrunn "British Auto Classics" book:

...my first white metal kit, so a learning curve all the way, but it's the only way to get this beautiful car into your scale garage. Now I've got the pictures, I can see that there's some more polishing to do here and there, and the "indicator" orange needs touching up when my Humbrol Clear Orange arrives at my local hobby shop...

bestest,

M.

[Danno]

Nice car.

[Foxer]

For sure not a lot of these here!

That's a good looking car! How much detail is that on the engine? Looks like a good kit .. and it's NOT 1/43!

[Zoom Zoom]

Nice That's the first built kit I have seen of it; a friend of mine has the same kit. I have the builtup version that was offered many years ago; the parts all seem to match between it and the kit. Very unique piece, and I'm glad I've been able to see the 1:1 car at both the Blackhawk Museum and the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance a year ago.

[oldscool]

Never saw one of those before. Great looking car.

gus

[george 53]

I agree, I've NEVER seen that car before. It's simply BEAUTIFUL! Where did you get it? Is it still in production? THAT would be VERY worth haveing, i LIKE it!!!

[Harry P.]

Cool! A very nice model of a very unique car... good job.

[novadose71]

Nice build of a rarely seen car

[george 53]

THANKS Marc, Jeeze it's a little TOO rich for me, But I'll tellya that IS one BEAUTIFUL car!!! Thanks again for the info!

[Zoom Zoom]

If anyone else is going to build the model, here are some detail shots I took of the car last year:

[george 53]

Bob, is that car driven from the CENTER, or from the right side(Like most British Cars?) Anyway it's driven, it's STILL a BEAUTIFUL car!!! THANKS for the pics!!!

[jbwelda]

1966? man that car was WAY ahead of the design curve if that truly was when this car was built!

excellent job in a tough medium. makes me want to consider the 1/24 D-type i have in white metal. i forget the maker of the kit but its full detail and weighs a ton. ive had it on the shelf for many years and now i have to pull it off the shelf and check it out closer!

Edited March 23, 2011 by jbwelda

[Matt Bacon]

Thanks for the kind words, guys! It’s been a bit of a battle at times, but I just wanted one of these on the shelf very badly! It is a pretty steep price, but my lovely wife bought it for me for my birthday last year - I’d never spend that much on a kit for myself! I was pleasantly surprised by the contents of the box - surprisingly little clean up was necessary. There was light flash in a couple of places, and a couple of grainy areas on the surface which needed a skim of Milliput, but that was about it. I polished the main castings with wire wool to get them prepped for auto primer, and then sanded that as normal. Everything is held together with screws, epoxy (for the big bits) and superglue, with Formula 560 Canopy glue to attach the glazing. The build basically was much the same as you would for a plastic kit -engine, interior, sandwich in between chassis and body. Fortunately, the real thing has a darn great seam line between the wheels below the doors, so I could fit the lower nose and tail parts to the upper body and blend them seamlessly before painting, and then attach the painted bodywork to the painted and completed chassis right at the end.

There are a couple of gotchas in the kit - the worst is that the “turrets†moulded onto the body and chassis to screw them together at the back are too tall to allow the seam to close, so they need filing back until it fits flush. The other is more a matter of opinion, but I think that the rear wheels sit too far out in the arches, and they are fixed that far apart by the the cast rear “suspensionâ€. If I did another I’d file that back by a millimeter or so on each side to get the wheels a little further inboard. I’d also consider cutting the separate elements out of the one-piece vacform glazing and fixing the windscreen right inside the frame. The engine cover is also a very tight fit over the velocity stacks, and would benefit from sitting slightly higher.

Thanks for the pictures, Bob... they would have been very useful to me, and I hope someone else does put them to good use. One thing to bear in mind - the kit depicts the car before the post-crash rebuild, so there are no “eybrows†over the wheel arches. This means that really, it should be built in 1966 trim, not as it is today, unless you want to add the eyebrows (and maybe some other changes)

I think that it’s without doubt a stunning looking car - as soon as I saw the pictures in “British Auto Legends†I knew I had to have one! Whether it would have been a Le Mans winner is a point we could debate for ever. It still needed a lot of development work before it was ready for primetime - there’s a list of the “snags†found in a single test drive on the XK13 web site (http://www.xj13.eu/xj13/default.aspx) and you can see that there are plenty of them. But if it had appeared when it was originally planned, it would have been racing against lightweight E-Types and GTOs, and I think it would have had a very good chance. As time went on, though, even if the rules hadn’t changed to exclude it, it would have been facing GT40s and Ferrari 330s, which would have been a whole different ball game...

@george53: It’s not technically driven from the centre - the main seat is toward the right, but the “passenger seat†is tiny and never used, so the driver sits much more centrally than in a regular two-seater.

@jbwelda: K&R do make a D-type in white metal in their range (which I think may have had another name before K&R) so there’s a good chance yours is one of theirs as well. Personally, I’d really like one of their C-types!

Overall, it’s an iconic Jaguar, whose engine echoes down the years in all kinds of V12 saloons, and whose design influence continues through the XK180 to the C-X75...

bestest,

M.

[jbwelda]

and k&r it is, or at least sorta:

and by the way i have an Auto-Art 1/18 diecast of an XJ-13 as well. i just had no idea it was from the sixties! the styling made me think it was from the 1990s or even bang up to date! this new found fact will make it fit in much better with my collection of 1/18 vintage jags, Ctypes, Dtypes, etc:

oh and by the way, yours compares very favorably, and in fact might even be nicer, than this 1/18 highly regarded and reviewed Auto-Art example. and of course the detail level is easier to replicate in 1/18 than 1/24 for congrats on a job well done!