TG does Jag’s ultimate retro track day

When Jaguar shelled out several million quid for Dr James Hull's collection of 543 classic cars back in April 2014, the same question was on everyone's lips: what are you going to do with them?

‘The cars in the collection will be actively used to support brand and experiential marketing to develop the brands and business in existing and emerging markets' was Jag's impenetrable reply.

Turns out the dull-sounding explanation was justified. If Jaguar had come out and said: ‘Well, we're going to let you, and any member of the public willing to pay between £95 and £2000, come and drive our new toys on a private test track', we'd all have fainted from excitement.

The programme kicks off later in 2014, but TG was invited along to Jag's new Fen End test facility (the old ProDrive test track) to have a steer in some lovely old sports cars and racers ahead of time. Tough gig to get, etc.

The Jaguar Heritage Experience model is not dissimilar from the wildly successful (but always frustrating) supercar experiences you can buy in newsagents and the ‘gifts for blokes' section of that high street retailer with the big catalogue and miniature pencils.

Cough up, and depending on your investment, there's a tiered selection of cars to drive. Pay the minimum £95 and you get 30 minutes passengering in an E-type, and a quick ten-minute squirt behind the wheel yourself. The same sum gets you into a D-type racer or XK150 for the same period.

So, it's already sounding better than those ‘DRIVE A LAMBORGHINI!' packages which offer laps in a raggedy Gallardo around some cones on an airfield.

Jag's Heritage Experience cars require an instructor alongside you- spare a thought for the poor soul in the D-type, which was never really designed to seat a passenger and has no aero screen to deflect the 100mph headwind.

But in addition to brimming with handy driving tips for manhandling the infamous Moss short-throw gearbox and getting the best from skinny cross-ply rubber, the chaps also know their stuff about the cars' history. It's part vintage track day, part live museum tour. And they're not averse to letting the old girls ‘stretch their legs'.

£250 gets you into the meat of the scheme: 15-minute drives in an E-type and F-type, D-type and F-Type R Coupe, or two generations of E-type.

At the top of the tree sit the flagship ‘Grace and Pace' and ‘Le Mans' £2000 packages - a full day's driving the cream of Jaguar's back catalogue.

For TG, that kicks off with a beautiful 1961 XK150S, affectionately referred to as ‘Plum' in a nod to its deep burgundy paint. The XK150S was the Sixties equivalent of today's F-Type R: a faster, more sorted version of Jaguar's core sports car. The S's 3.8-litre straight six has 265bhp to a regular XK150's 220bhp, and so much torque it'll happily accept third gear around Fen End's hairpin bend. Handy if you're not quite versed in the art of non-synchro transmissions, that.

Fresh from the Dr Hull collection, the 1960 XK150S was only just allowed into the programme - because it's in achingly good nick. The gorgeous cream leatherwork inside feels like it was upholstered yesterday, and the polished door opening mechanism couldn't have been any better finished by modern laser-cutting apparatus. The sheer beauty, the elegance of Plum is at total odds with its raffish Toad-of-Toad-Hall demeanor.

The 1961 Series 1 E-type has a similar character, except you sit far lower, with an even more phallic view down the bonnet and the truculent Moss gearbox doing its best to punctuate any Swinging Sixties fantasies with a wincingly embarrassing graunch. Beware if the E-Type is on your must-drive list for one of these Heritage Days - you need the precision of a surgeon and the brute strength of a shot-putter to find third.

But it's beautiful and sounds sensational and romps along at a fair old lick for something that was being designed by Brylcream sorts who travelled to work on steam trains. Drive one before you die. It's worth the effort.

Next up was the biggest surprise of the day: the Tom Coombs race-prepped 1961 MkII. After the waist-high roadsters, the upright 3-series-sized saloon looked about as sporty or intimidating as a wingback chair. Beware this blasé attitude if you choose to drive it.

Even once you drop into the bucket seat, clamp on the harness and note the stripped cabin and bare floors, you'll still struggle not to swear like an utter rascal the first time you open up the 220bhp 3.8-litre six. It's a complete hooligan, firing itself down the half-mile back straight with plenty of transmission whine and an induction rasp so rude the leaping cat bonnet mascot may as well have been replaced by a two-fingered salute.

The MkII is very, very fast, and feels half its size through the tight complex of turns that bookend the circuit. No wonder it was the Sixties getaway car of choice - the XFR-S we tried at the end of the day felt obviously quicker, but nowhere near as dramatic.

Yup, the 60 year-old, 200bhp-odd Coombs MkII actually makes a 542bhp supercharged V8 super-saloon feel boring. Now tell us you don't want a crack behind its spindly steering wheel.

Admission time: it was the racecars I really wanted to drive. Audi isn't letting punters loose in R18 e-trons any time soon, but Jaguar will actually hand you the keys to a C-type and D-type - Le Mans victors both, in period - and wave you onto Fen End's circuit for jolly japes. Granted, unlike the rest of the cars here, these are recreations - the ordinals are too priceless for we, the great unwashed - but they still look tickety-boo, smell intoxicating, and sound spot on.

Like the Lightweight E-Type recreation, they're built to original spec, save for a few modern tweaks to cope with unsympathetic amateur pilots. So what if the D's sensational aluminum bodywork is spoiled by the roll-bar? Once it splutters into life like a curmudgeonly grandfather being disturbed mid-snooze, you just won't care. I didn't. It immediately feels focused in a way the road cars don't.

Where their slender steering wheels wander and fidget, the C and D behave professionally, only telegraphing important information back to the driver's palms. While you point the E-type with thumb and forefinger, the C and D get your forearms, shoulders and chest involved, managing to feel all lightweight-dainty and brutish at the same time.

The D is way faster - it strolls past 100mph down the main straight, and will yaw towards oversteer if you so much as look at the stiffly sprung throttle. Don't worry, the instructors don't mind "as long as you're not a yob with her."

It's pulling strongly until I lift out of the sticky throttle for fear of my instructor's face suffering frostbite where it's not protected by classic Spitfire pilot goggles.

Then, a minor disaster. A coolant hose comes loose and the D-Type overheats on the way back to the pits, cloaking supermodel and Jag-lover Jodie Kidd in oily fug. She's not best-pleased and half-jokingly brands me a ‘car-killer'.

Thankfully, some British nowse and special racing tape have the D-type back on form shortly thereafter. Phew. The older C-type is impeccably behaved, and is actually the sweeter drive, thanks to an (even) larger steering wheel affording more leverage and a much more user-friendly, snickety gearchange.

We were only granted a handful of laps as a sort of amuse-bouche for what paying customers can expect, but you wouldn't bet against this Heritage Experience scheme selling out faster than Nick Clegg. Sure, the top packages are expensive, but it's a much better buy than a VIP ticket to Salon Prive or Pebble Beach, where there's an awful lot of car-fawning but very little in the way of knuckle-grazing, calf-aching driving being conducted. On reflection, the best bet is to buy several of the cheaper packages, cherry-picking the Jags you've always fancied a steer of.

And the Fen End facility? Wow, what potential. Right now it's windswept and exposed and feels little-changed from how it must've looked as an RAF base during the Second World War. But if this sort of grin-inducing dream day is what Jag's Special Operations branch can come up with in six months, imagine what they can do to this place in a couple of years.

Right now, the future is bright for Jaguar. Ironically, it's Coventry's glorious past that's leading the charge.