Lot 514: 1983-85 Group 44 Jaguar XJR-5 IMSA Racing Coupe

This beautiful IMSA Championship endurance racing Coupe epitomizes everything that is best about American racing design, construction and preparation combined with the best of British international racing heritage and pedigree from Jaguar. It was campaigned in period by no lesser drivers than the celebrated Brian Redman and multiple Le Mans winner Hurley Haywood, together with Pat Bedard, and it is offered here in what appears to be generally beautifully preserved condition.

Bob Tullius had been a long time enthusiast for the British marque when he formed the Group 44 racing team in the early 1960s with partner Brian Feurstenau. He loyally campaigned Jaguar E-Types – in addition to MGs and Triumph TR8s – in the USA for the following two decades. He had also found time to be deeply involved with the ground-breaking Howmet gas turbine-engined Le Mans car project of 1968 and his experience of racing that car at Le Mans – in the world-famous 24-Hour race which Jaguar had won five times through the 1950s – determined him to return there one day in a car of his own construction. The result was the Jaguar XJR-5, which was built essentially with the IMSA race organization’s premier GTP class in mind. Bob Tullius persuaded Mike Dale of Jaguar Cars Inc, New Jersey, to fund the project, and he engaged former GM and Ford designer Lee Dykstra to design an up-to-date car for him, to accept the Jaguar V12 racing engine as already prepared by Group 44 for their Championship-winning E-Type variant.

By January 1982 drawings and clay models of the Lee Dykstra-designed ground-effect aerodynamics Coupe contender were released for public consumption. Dykstra’s design was for a sheet aluminum monocoque chassis with honeycomb floor section and tubular-reinforced steel bulkheads. Long underfloor aerodynamic venture tunnels extended from behind the flat-bottomed cockpit area alongside the fully-stressed V12 engine block, curving inwards towards the rear to exit beneath the full-width rear wing. The graceful and beautifully-proportioned bodywork was fashioned in carbon fiber and Kevlar composite and the first 5.3-liter V12-engined XJR prototype was tested at Summit Point as early as June 1982.

In late-August it made its racing debut at Road America, where Bob Tullius and Bill Adam co-drove to a third-place finish behind two of the familiar Porsche 935s. They were the first GTP crew home – a most promising debut.

Lee Dykstra embarked upon a lengthy development programme to improve his new car’s competitiveness, and this program would – by the summer of 1985 – have seen a claimed “99.9 per cent” of the Group 44 design’s original components being re-drawn. The engine grew from 5.3-liters to fully 6-liters by 1984, and the V12 units were fitted with Lucas/Micos engine management systems. Bob Tullius/Bill Adams had won their first race outright at Road Atlanta in 1983 and further victories followed, at Lime Rock, Mosport and Pocono where Doc Bundy co-drove with Tullius, who finished second only to Porsche’s Al Holbert in that year’s IMSA Drivers’ Championship.

Multiple Le Mans-winning driver Derek Bell meanwhile tested one of the Group 44 team’s XJR-5 cars at Silverstone in mid-1983 and his very favorable report attracted the final green light from Jaguar for Group 44 to enter Le Mans 1984. The two-car Group 44 team was unlucky there, but the white and two-tone green liveried Coupes made a superb impression.

Meanwhile, this particular car was retained at home in the USA as a major team contender. Within its fully equipped cockpit on the left-side you will find this chassis’s identity plate, recording build date as November 14, 1983 and individual serial ‘009’.

Included with the car is a document attributed to Lawton L. Foushee, Jr, Crew Chief of Group 44, which confirms the following information, this car racing under IMSA competition number ‘04’ virtually throughout apart from the Mid-Ohio IMSA race of 1985 at which it wore ‘44’:

‘XJR-5 Serial No 009

1984: Atlanta – 3rd – Redman/Bedard; Charlotte – 3rd – Redman/Bedard; Watkins Glen – 3rd – Redman/Haywood.

1985 (all Redman/Haywood apart from Mid-Ohio): Daytona 24-Hours – DNF engine; Miami – 4th; Atlanta – FIRST; Riverside – DNF accident; Laguna Seca – 3rd; Charlotte – 2nd; Lime Rock – 2nd; Mid-Ohio – co-driven by Robinson/Haywood – 3rd; Watkins Glen – Redman/Haywood again, who co-drove the car for the rest of its frontline IMSA career – DNF, transmission; Portland – 4th; Sears Point DNF, transmission; Watkins Glen – 3rd; Columbus, DNF, transmission; Daytona 3-Hours – 2nd.

The car was restored by Group 44 in September 1987, and on March 3, 1988 was sold via David J. Bate of Weston, Connecticut, and Jaguar Deutschland Gmbh to renowned German collector Peter Kaus for his Rosso Bianco Collection at Aschaffenburg.

This mouth-wateringly handsome American/British co-creation has been lovingly preserved within the collection ever since and it is offered today as a car restored by its manufacturer but which has seen very little use other than long-term display ever since. A letter from David J. Bate in the documentation file confirms that “Prior to sale, the car will be totally rebuilt to new standards” – and that “The car will be driveable but not for competition purposes…” – both perfectly normal and respectable considerations by an established pure-blooded racing organization such as Group 44 Jaguar. Due to the nature of the car, and having been a long term museum exhibit, no attempt has been made to fire the engine.

These XJR-5 IMSA GTP Coupes were magnificent machines that provided in very many ways the complete antidote to endurance racing’s contemporary domination by the relatively common Porsche 956/962-series Coupes from Zuffenhausen. Unlike the distinctly muffled-sounding turbocharged German cars, these British-engined V12s sang a wonderfully distinctive Ferrari-like tenor song. So here we are delighted to offer a most handsome yet still rare example of the celebrated Bob Tullius/Lee Dykstra IMSA-cum-Le Mans pedigree Group 44 design.

These XJR-5s proved to be the precursor to Jaguar’s return to Le Mans 24-Hour and World Endurance Championship victory with the subsequent Walkinshaw XJR-series cars. But this pristine white and green beauty has a long and honorable racing record, in which it was handled by two hugely respected star drivers in Brian Redman and Hurley Haywood – and it is on record, above all, as being the an IMSA race winner, with the additional cachet of three second places, six third places, and two fourth fabulously impressive future Vintage racer for a lucky new owner…