Gallery: Stunning Jaguar D‑types at Revival

Ferrari 250 GTO, Ford GT40, McLaren F1 GTR, Porsche 917, Jaguar XJR-9, Audi R8. All and more are titans famed for the impact their successes had on the sport and popular motoring culture as a whole. We’re not here to definitively answer the questions posed in the above introduction (is that even possible?) but you might have clocked a notable absence from our list.

It is as of our celebration of Ecurie Ecosse at Revival, the current front-runner in our minds: The Jaguar D-type.

It ticks all the boxes of a bona-fide game-changer. Power, reliability, revolutionary aerodynamics and braking – all tools that contributed to Le Mans wins through 1955, 1956 and 1957. The latter win perhaps solidified the legend, with Scottish privateers Ecurie Ecosse leading the 1,2,3,4,6 final placing.

A car four years into its career sporting little but incremental improvements, without factory support, sitting atop the podium – it’s pretty much unprecedented even to this day. So consider all of this when you’re picking your all-time great, as well as, obviously, the stunning imagery of the D-types running at Revival in a moment of reflection.

Photography by Tom Shaxson, Nicole Hains, Jochen Van Cauwenberge, Bobby Peters, Richard Pardon, Tony Adamson and Jayson Fong