1963 Team Cunningham Jaguar E-Type Lightweight Competition Coupe
Coming to auction in 2017 will be this 1963 Team Cunningham Jaguar E-Type Lightweight Competition Coupe . It will be featured at the Bonhams Auction held at the The Quail Lodge during Monterey Peninsula Car Week.
As the factory effort that year for Jaguar, the Briggs Cunningham team flew the works banner at Le Mans in 1963 where this car – chassis number S850664 – made its appearance as Number 14. Later, Team Cunningham would race it at the Road America 500 and then again at the Bridgehampton 500 where it finished fourth overall. Once retired, the pedigreed racecar was displayed at the Cunningham Museum and, after Mr. Cunningham sold his private collection, was later owned by noted collectors Lord Bamford, Paul Vestey and Campbell McLaren.
Known as the “GTO killers,” these lightweight competition Jaguar E-Types were faster on most tracks than the fabled Ferrari 250 GTO. As some of the most successful and iconic sports-racing cars ever produced, they are among Britain’s most celebrated cars and rarely, if ever, come up for sale. Bonhams has famously auctioned both the world-record Jaguar Lightweight E-Type and Ferrari 250 GTO and can attest to the significance of this machine.
“There are rare, interesting cars, and there are cars that have belonged to rare, interesting people,” says author Richard Holt. “The Briggs Cunningham Lightweight E-Type scores so heavily on both counts that it is difficult to decide which is more of a star. You could make a good argument either way: the ultra-rare racing thoroughbred versus the all-American hero and entrepreneur. But the truth is that thinking about one without the other makes no sense because the Lightweight E-Type would probably never have existed if it hadn’t been for Briggs Swift Cunningham II.”
Featured in many books – indeed, claiming its own chapters – and even made into toy cars, the Team Cunningham #14 Jaguar E-Type is legendary. Genuine, highly original, well documented and eligible for most of the world’s great races, rallies and concours events, it is a car of immense distinction.
Serial Number S850664
Auction Date: August 18, 2017
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