Gorgeous Classic Jag

The 1955 Jaguar XKD-type Sports Racer was the spiritual, stylistic, and structural ancestor of the E-type

by Paul Hardiman

XKD 509, the first "production" D off the line in 1955, has a long and interesting history. It was supplied new to New York distributor Chuck Hornburg, who sold it to Albert R. Browne of Menlo Park. At the time, its new price in the U.K. was £2,500 ($6,957).

After unsuccessfully approaching Phil Hill and Carroll Shelby to drive it, Browne turned to French-born veteran Lou Brero. The car appeared at Sebring, its British Racing Green replaced with a shocking new livery of matte dark blue stripes over white, unlike anything seen on a D-type before, but intended to make the car more visible in the night sections of the 12-hour race.

That ended with clutch failure after 58 laps, but later the car managed a quite extensive American racing history, including a second overall in a 150-mile race at Elkhart Lake, beaten only by Shelby in a 4.4-liter Ferrari.

By 1957, Brero had acquired the D and won at Stockton. After the car suffered engine failure at Dillingham Field, Hawaii, on the weekend of April 20–21, he lost his life following a fiery accident racing a substitute Chevy V8-engined Maserati A6GCM. The D-type passed to his son Lou Brero Jr., who admitted to a hippy existence, "sometimes driving the car along the beach in the sun."

In 1974, by which time the car appeared battered and in bare aluminium, he was persuaded to sell to visiting British dealer Brian Classic of Cheshire. Despite years of neglect and poor storage, 509 was complete and mostly unspoiled, though the body had been chopped about to fit a roll hoop. Classic entrusted the rebuild to his brother-in-law, historic racer Willie Green, and recalls many happy road miles in the car, plus some club race meetings at his local Liverpool circuit, Aintree.

About this time Nigel Moores became interested in the car and bought it. Moores was the nephew of Sir John Moores, founder of Littlewoods Football Pools [a soccer lottery], but maker of his own fortune in electronics, forestry, and the hotel business—and highly regarded on the historic racing scene. But Moores lost his life as a passenger in a road accident in southern France in 1977, after which his cars were maintained by his long-time mechanic Paul Kelly, some being displayed in the Lakeland Motor Museum and the Jersey Motor Museum.

The collection was dispersed in the late 1980s—by much of the team now working for Bonhams—but XKD509, Moores's favorite D-type, was retained for his son James.

At some point during its history, maybe around the time it was in Jersey, 509's original engine 2015-9 was swapped with that from one of Moores's other Ds, chassis XKD512. It now has its original motor back, rebuilt in 2003 by marque specialist Pearson Engineering, and block and head bear the correct number, matching the chassis data plate riveted to the bonnet panelwork. Gearbox and body numbers match as well.

This car sold for $4,378,343 at the Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed in Sussex, England, on July 11, 2008.

"Please do not touch," said the notice on the Plexiglas windshield. It could hardly have made any difference if the entire Festival had pawed it. Here was a well-used, even tatty D-type, its paint chipped and its upholstery cracked, which had, in one of the familiar descriptors used by SCM's Paul Duchene, "given long and faithful service."

Though panel fit is fair, paint is cracked off around external bolt heads and just plain missing around the cockpit edges, and the car wears a later safety cut-off and untidy wiring on the otherwise original dash. However untouched it looked, it had been rebuilt from quite a sorry state in the mid-'70s. Mechanically, it appears completely up to snuff.

An enviable record

The D-type Jaguar was the spiritual, stylistic, and structural ancestor of the E-type, with its monocoque center section and engine nestled up front in a tubular frame.