The company is renowned for its Jaguar sports car restoration projects, as well as building replicas of the famous XJ13 Le Mans racer (on the video). Meet its latest project: a V12 based on a design over half a century old.
In the summer of 1955, a group of Jaguar engineers led by company’s ex-Chief Designer Claude Bailey began working on a brand-new engine for the Le-Mans endurance race series. Eight years later, the first version of the engine emerged with five liters of displacement and four camshafts. It produced 502 horsepower (375 kilowatts) and up to 523 Nm (386 lb-ft) of torque.
The company built the XJ13 Concept specifically to test the new engine, but the car turned out not fast enough and challenging to drive at that, tending to skid or even lose traction completely at higher speeds. As a result, Jaguar buried the XJ13 project and repurposed the engine for use in road-legal cars instead.
In building their ‘tera’ engine, Building The Legend tried to imagine what the famous V12 would look like if the company had continued to improve it until today. It comes in two sizes (6.1 and 6.3 liters), churns out between 355 and 660 hp (265 – 492 kW), and revs up to 8,000 – 8,500 RPM. It fits both racecars and road-legal cars.
In our earlier news, we reported about Race Cast Engineering wrapping up a similarly crazy project last year: a GM LS-based V12 with 9.5 liters of displacement and cast-iron casing. The monster motor pumps out 765 hp (570 kW) and 941 Nm (694 lb-ft) of torque.