Today we’ll be looking at the various racing cars on display at the Hampton Court Palace Concours of Elegance.
Following on from my last post which was about the Golden Era Coupes in the show (which you can read about here: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2024/09/11/concours-of-elegance-2024-golden-era-coupes/) we shall start with the cars from the 1950s and 1960s.
We’ll start with a pair of Lagonda DP115s.
There were a number of Jaguar sports cars including the C-Type:
The D-Type:
And, of course, some E-Types:
There were also a couple of more unusual Jaguars. Here we have the 1954 Cooper-Jaguar T33.
Jaguar works driver Peter Whitehead commissioned Cooper to build a car that would beat both the current C-Type and future D-Type Jaguar factory racing cars. It was powered by the same 3.5ltr straight six as the Jaguars, but weighted 50KG lighter than the D-Type.
This is the XJ13 Prototype – a car that was developed for LeMans in 1966 but never raced.
It features a 5.0ltr V12 which sat in the middle.
A car that certainly saw success at LeMans was Ford’s GT40.
The GT40 wasn’t the only car there from Carroll Shelby – there was also this lovely pair of Cobras.
This Ferrari 196 S is just one of three examples built. This one had quite an illustrious career with NART, The North American Racing Team set up by Ferrari importer Luigi Chinetti, which had factory backing from Maranello.
Now for a car with a fantastic story:
In 1945 the Spanish government took over the Barcelona factory of Hispano-Suiza and Fiat’s Spanish assets. They founded a new vehicle manufacturer: Empresa Nacional de Autocamiones S.A, or ENASA for short. ENASA was the parent company of two brands – Pegaso and SAVA.
Pegaso mostly built trucks, buses and military vehicles but they did build a sports car with the aim of taking on Ferrari and Alfa Romeo. It was called the Z-102.
Pegaso only built 84 Z-102s between 1951 and 1958. Of those only 11 carried this Berlinetta body and 3 of those became factory race cars.
This is one of those race cars.
After a short racing career it was sold to a Spanish racing driver. Then in the 1960s it made its way to Nevada and in 1970 was brought my an engineer, Dr Nicholas Begovich. It remained in Begovich’s ownership until 2019 when it was acquired by the Audrain Auto Museum in Rhode Island. The car went through a bare metal restoration and was presented at the Pebble Beach Concours in 2023.
This Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court Palace was the cars first public appearance in Europe since the 1950s.
There were a few more contemporary GT cars dotted about the show.
Ferrari’s 333 SP had a long career in sports car racing, campaigning between 1994 and 2003 in both the IMSA GT Championship and the FIA Sportscar Championship.
Ford’s RS200 Group B rally car.
A Mk1 Escort rally car.
I think this is a Ferrari 625. Please correct me if I’m wrong. The 625 was a Tipo 500 Formula 2 car, modified to compete in the 1954 Formula 1 season.
The Bentley Barnato-Hassan Special which holds the lap record at Brooklands at 142.6mph.
We’ve had the pleasure of seeing this at Brooklands, Savile Row and Salon Prive before. It’s a regular on this blog – so if any slot car kit manufacturers are reading this, I need a model of it!
The Bugatti Type 35 family of cars are icons of pre-war motorsports. They were extremely successful as factory team cars and were also brought by a lot of privateers.
This particular car is a Type 37, which is a Type 35 with a 1.5ltr inline 4, was first owned by land and water speed record pilot Malcolm Campbell.
Thanks for joining me on this look around the racing cars of the Concours of Elegance. I hope you enjoyed it!
The final part of this series highlighting the pre-war cars of the show will be up soon!
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By Richard Francis
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