Group 44 Racing XJS article: Vintage Coolness
 

Heh guys

A pretty cool article and you tube clip on Group 44 racing XJS at the Petrolicious website:

http://petrolicious.com/this-is-the-...e-group-44-xjs

Wow, that's a great video. I was not aware of how successful Bob Tillius was in Trans Am racing. He must have been a great talent as the XJS gave away a bunch of displacement and weighed more that the Corvettes. The racing XJS was definitely clean and better looking! The Trans Am Championship, European Touring Car Championship, and the Jaguar V12 powered cars winning at Le Mans! There is a lot of racing heritage that our XJS' can proudly lay claim to.

Yeah for sure. I was the same. Didn't realize how successful he was. Kinda gets overshadowed by the TWR XJS's in Bathurst and all, which is also ultra cool.

78 was pre HE engine too. I wonder what was under that bonnet?

Absolutely; I think that one of the reasons that the XJS is so undervalued is that to the average punter there is no apparent racing heritage to hook onto whereas in reality it was fairly successful.
I never understood the mad valuations of Healey 3000's; it's all down to a couple of rally wins.

Group 44 tribute car in progress
 

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...c55982f68.jpeg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...7143236ee.jpeg
Actual group 44 fender flairs.

The TWR XJS''s were well appreciated in the UK, as were the Le Mans cars.
Group 44 did have success in the US. They were ahead of TWR in developing a potential Le Mans car for Jaguar, but then kinda got punted out as TWR convinced Jaguar that they were the better bet. Geographical proximity can't have hurt TWR either. Group 44 chassis design was kinda old school, and in fact later on obsolete components from the Le Mans XJR's were shipped stateside for use by Group 44. Tom Walkinshaw was a canny Scot! I digress!

Interestingly the TWR racing XJS's used the older non-HE engine as the head was more tunable. This fact was not released in the Jaguar marketing blurb :) Expect Group 44 did the same.
Glorious E type pic!

Nearly all race cars used the early flatheads. They simply flow more air than the HE head did.*
The real reason for the HE head was to meet the coming California Smog rules.
While the HE has a reputation for getting better fuel mileage very little of that had to do with the head. Transmission, rear end ratio’s, better EFI. And mainly compression. Were the prime reasons of that.
*. each time the air has to change direction of flow horsepower is lost. The early “Flathead”. Changes direction once and the air/ fuel is in the cylinder. With the HE the air/ fuel has to change directions twice from the intake port to the cylinder.

Cool Video. I remember bits and pieces of the Group 44 racing from back then. I always loved that green and white XJS. Thanks for refreshing my memory.

Jack