Top Gear's coolest racing cars: Jaguar D-Type

Loving the D-type is a bit like loving The Beatles or George Best. It’s such an icon that it’s also actually something of a cliché, at which point it’s tempting to stick the boot in and say you always preferred the Stones or Denis Law.

The trouble is, the D-type is actually better than folklore has it, and unites a trinity of irresistible factors: it’s beautiful to look at, fantastic to drive, and it won the Le Mans 24 hours race three times on the trot, in 1955, 1956 and 1957, under the command of drivers who we must salute here as the heroes they were (is that four factors? Who cares).

In the same way that a truly charismatic human being somehow alters the very atmosphere of whichever room they happen to be in, seeing a D-type in the flesh is always a major moment. Jaguar’s design team had almost certainly clocked Alfa Romeo’s wonderful 1952 Disco Volante, which advanced the idea of all-enveloping aerodynamic bodywork. But in creating the successor to the equally lovely and successful C-type – itself a Le Mans winner in 1951 and 1953 – the design focus was as much on reliability and robustness as aerodynamics to maximise the firm’s chances at Le Mans, a circuit renowned for its ultra high-speed sections and car-breaking properties.

Enter Malcolm Sayer, whose background in aviation would help give the D-type its remarkable appearance. Sitting in the D is certainly akin to the experience of being strapped into an aircraft cockpit; the chassis used a central tub made of riveted aluminium, which was advanced for the time, with a spar down the middle separating driver and passenger compartment. A welded aluminium front sub-frame of square-section tubes was bolted to the monocoque.

The D-type’s engine was and remains a thing of visual and aural wonder, especially for anyone who has been reared on a diet of modern performance cars – the only software in here are the organs inside the driver. The 3.4-litre XK twin-cam was an all-aluminium unit to reduce weight, and dry sump lubrication meant the engine could be dropped three inches in the sub-frame, and there was less chance of oil surge during fast cornering. Triple Weber carbs fed the engine, which produced 250bhp and, although truculent at low revs, pulled lustily at racing speeds with an unsurpassable wail. The D-type is one of those cars you can identify simply by the noise it makes.

The independent front suspension used double wishbones, with a hardier, much less sophisticated beam axle at the rear, chosen simply because it was better suited to the job of endurance racing. Where Jaguar was ahead of the curve was in the use of disc brakes, an innovation Ferrari wouldn’t get round to bothering with until 1958 (and even then only because British driver Peter Collins had them fitted to his 250 PF road car as a sort of protest). Two rubber fuel tanks were fitted in the rear, with a quick-release filler cap in the fairing on the driver’s side. A fin was later added to enhance high-speed stability, and a long-nose version of the chassis arrived in 1955 to improve the car’s top speed. A steel sub-frame also replaced the aluminium one.

TopGear.com had the enormous good fortune to drive the 2015 Mille Miglia in a 1956 D-type, alongside urbane classic car broker and expert Simon Kidston, whose car it was. We must have looked ridiculous, both being well over six foot tall, and crammed into a car not designed for one plus-size human being, never mind two of them. The passenger side of a D is best avoided: the tool-box is under the seat, raising your head above the top of the windcreen, if there is an aero screen at all, although you’ll be too busy wondering why your feet are on fire to worry (they’re about two inches away from the oil tank, and it gets hot enough to melt the soles of your shoes).

The driver’s side is roomier, but only just. A huge rev counter dominates, the steering wheel is so huge it’s practically in your lap, while the gear lever pulls the opposite trick and is more of a slender wand than anything meaningful. It’s also canted forward, so your knuckles can easily get bruised on the instruments.

So intimidating doesn’t even get close, to begin with: the D-type uses a triple-plate racing clutch, and the gearchange needs a frustrating mix of brute force and delicacy. Those triple carbs don’t like big throttle inputs, either, but this is all part of the D-type’s charming initiation procedure: when you get it right, it’s brilliant in a way nothing modern can replicate. And when you get it right at proper speeds, your senses can’t help but be flooded with visions of Mike Hawthorn and cohorts, dancing one of the most visually arresting cars of all time from apex-to-apex. This is definitely a car that likes to move around.

Of the four cars entered at Le Mans in 1954, only one finished, Tony Rolt and Adrian Hamilton taking second place behind the Ferrari 375 Plus driven by Jose Froilan Gonzalez and Maurice Trintignant. Brake problems saw Stirling Moss and Peter Walker retire after 92 laps, but Moss had managed a top speed of almost 173mph on the Mulsanne Straight, which boded well for the D-type’s future (the long-nose car would be good for 180mph).

Victory came in 1955’s Le Mans, a race distressingly better remembered for the grim death of Mercedes driver Pierre Levegh and 83 spectators than for Hawthorn and team-mate Ivor Lueb’s win in the D-type. (NB: that the race wasn’t immediately abandoned was to enable the emergency services to do their job without the capacity crowd swamping the surrounding road network, although it’s difficult to imagine such a decision being made now.)

With Jaguar’s top people tasked with developing the E-type, it fell to privateers to keep the D-type flame alive, something the Scottish equipe Ecurie Ecosse managed with remarkable flair. They won Le Mans in 1956 and ’57, while the D-type enjoyed success in a myriad other endurance races worldwide. That it casts a shadow Jaguar can’t escape 60 years later tells you all you need to know.

Year: 1954-1957
Designed by: Malcolm Sayer, 
Drivers: Stirling Moss, Mike Hawthorn, Ivor Lueb, Ron Flockhart, Ninian Sanderson, Jock Lawrence, Duncan Hamilton, Masten Gregory
Engine: 3.4-litre, six-cylinder, DOHC, 250bhp @ 5750rpm
Weight: 992kg
Stand-out moment: too many to mention, but probably not Team TG at the 2015 Mille Miglia