The Jaguar That Was Never Meant to Exist

There is only one Jaguar XJ13 in the world — and the car sitting in the Jaguar Heritage museum today isn't even the original. Built in secret at Brown's Lane, Coventry, in 1965 to take Jaguar back to Le Mans, the XJ13 never raced a single lap. A late change to FIA homologation rules killed the programme before it started, and the car was shelved for four years. In 1971, while filming publicity footage for the E-Type V12 launch, it crashed at 135mph on the MIRA banked circuit and was destroyed. What survives today is a painstaking rebuild — and it's still turned down a seven-million-pound offer. This is the story of the fastest Jaguar most people have never heard of: the engineering, the crash, and the rebuild that made it priceless. 0:00 – Introduction 0:48 – Jaguar's Le Mans legacy 1:34 – The secret project begins 2:26 – Malcolm Sayer 3:32 – The engineering 4:34 – The lap record 5:32 – Why it never raced 6:30 – The crash at MIRA 8:18 – The rebuild 10:10 – The legacy If you want more stories about the rarest and most important British cars ever built, subscribe — there's plenty more where this one came from. #JaguarXJ13 #ClassicJaguar #BritishCars