Ultimate Cars - Racers - Jaguar D-Type

" 1,2,3. 1,2,3."

" The car is still an absolute magnificent. Beautiful! So flexible! There's so much torque down below."

" it's just astounding."

" What Jaguar realized was that there were more column inches, more pure publicity in winning Le Mans than in winning every single other sports car race on the calendar. And so instead of designing a car that had to go quite well in all these racers, he designed a car that was just designed to get well at Le Mans. "

" Now, the secret of winning Le Mans is to utilize the long straight from the course. If you can do that, you got the race in the bag."

" During the race, I was able to achieve a 192 mile an hour down this long straight, what they call the Mulsanne straight. And that was fantastic because the engine capacity was only 3.4."

" Wooh, there! Let that sink in for a moment, 192 miles per hour from a 3.4 liter engine. How did he do that? Well, I'm glad you asked. It's all because the D-type has a semi-monocoque structure. A what's a cock? A monocoque. It's French!"

" Bonkour! "

" For, no, not chicken singular. It means single shell. When applied to a car it means rather than placing the body on top of the heavy chassis, like this. That the body work is built around the frame, like this! This not only make the car stronger, it also makes the car really, really light. And the lighter the car the faster it would go. So the car's incredibly light and really fast. Why the iconic fin?"

" The rear fin is just such statement about our car. It was about working really at the actual limits of aerodynamics knowledge at that time. It didn't have any spoilers or any thing like that. It wasn't about providing down force or any thing about that. It was about just producing something that went quickly."

" Far from being the stylistic frippery. The fin was absolutely vital to keep the car going in a straight line at top speed. All the same, it looks great. What do you think, Sterling?"

" The D-type is the most beautiful car probably built. It looks fast. It is fast. It sounds good. It's reliable. It is the heritage of Jaguar."

" So, why is this car number 4 in our list and not the number 1 ultimate racer car."

" The unfortunate thing is that, about the shape, it was designed to cut through the air with ease. It wasn't actually very good in terms of stability because the air was going on the wrong places. There's a funny irony about aerodynamics and that it's that the natural tendencies to think that something is pure and simple is correct aerodynamics, that's a fact. The best aerodynamics is very square and very rigid."

" What Ian saying is the D-type has no down force, which you need for taking corners at speed and the D-type was never about taking corner after corner. It was all about hurtling down the long straights, which is great for when in Le Mans, but not anywhere else."