Neville Swales XJ13 " The forgotten Jaguar "
Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2020 4:55 pmI was lucky enough to be invited to the workshop of Neville Swales with a few others so myself and Steve ( Devilish ) went along to see what all the fuss was about.
The XJ13 was a racing Jaguar powered by a V12 engine and built to race at Le Mans and rival the Ford GT 40, but it crashed twice in testing and never raced in anger and is referred to as the forgotten Jaguar.
Neville is hand building them but there are no blueprints or plans for the car , instead he has had to do extensive research to locate old pictures and documents and talk to people who are still around and knew the car at the time, and slowly with a lot of trial and error the 1st XJ13 was built.
There are only 4 in existence and the completed one in the pictures is the 4th one, which has been sold and is being shipped over to California to take part in the Pebble Beach Concours Event , they sell for around £750,000 and as above are completely handbuilt, this one took 2 years from start to finish.
https://pebblebeachconcours.net/events/ ... -elegance/
What is more remarkable is that Neville doesn’t have a working history with cars, he spent many years working for breweries making beer and has had to overcome many hurdles to get where he is now, getting divorced, almost losing his house, and having to put up with lots of attention from Jaguar who say he is breaching copywrite, and legal arguments have taken place without any action so far.
The XJ13 was a racing Jaguar powered by a V12 engine and built to race at Le Mans and rival the Ford GT 40, but it crashed twice in testing and never raced in anger and is referred to as the forgotten Jaguar.
Neville is hand building them but there are no blueprints or plans for the car , instead he has had to do extensive research to locate old pictures and documents and talk to people who are still around and knew the car at the time, and slowly with a lot of trial and error the 1st XJ13 was built.
There are only 4 in existence and the completed one in the pictures is the 4th one, which has been sold and is being shipped over to California to take part in the Pebble Beach Concours Event , they sell for around £750,000 and as above are completely handbuilt, this one took 2 years from start to finish.
https://pebblebeachconcours.net/events/ ... -elegance/
What is more remarkable is that Neville doesn’t have a working history with cars, he spent many years working for breweries making beer and has had to overcome many hurdles to get where he is now, getting divorced, almost losing his house, and having to put up with lots of attention from Jaguar who say he is breaching copywrite, and legal arguments have taken place without any action so far.