2023-09-26 11:09:04 | pauls writes:

Magazine article posted on the web. Note the chassis number is not a factory stamping, it is possibly not correct. Corrections gratefully solicited:

www.classicdriver.com/de/article/sponsored-content/dieser-jaguar-e-type-scheunen ...

This unique and detailed modified Jaguar E-Type Lightweight had been parked since 1965 after a bad accident during training for the 1000 km race at the Nürburgring. Now it deserves to be restored to its former glory.

The story of this big cat begins with the Caillets, a well-known and wealthy family from the French part of Switzerland. The Caillets made a fortune in the early 20th century producing horse saddles for the Swiss Army, which continued to grow until the 1960s thanks to their reputation as manufacturers of the best saddles available in Switzerland. Maurice Caillet, born in 1932, was the heir to this mountain of money and used it to finance his racing career in his early 30s.

However, Caillet's start was a complete failure when he had an accident with his Cegga Maserati during the Cote de la Faucille hill climb in 1961, sustaining serious injuries and completely destroying his racing car.

Understandably, single-seaters had lost their appeal for him after that, and so Caillet decided to concentrate on endurance racing. His vehicle of choice, a Jaguar E-Type, didn't look bad, but the unsatisfactory results of the 1963 season prompted Caillet to look for ways to stay ahead of the competition. At the end of 1964 he found him in the form of a young racing engineer named Phil Henny. Caillet gave him the task of transforming his Jaguar into a fearsome racing machine in just four months.

The two wasted no time and traveled to England to gain valuable know-how at the Jaguar factory in Coventry. The visit was worthwhile because Henny was inspired by the modifications that Jaguar's racing department made to their customers' cars. As a souvenir, Caillet's E-Type received an aluminum hood and some optimized chassis components.

Now it was Henny's turn to, as he himself said, "turn a donkey into a thoroughbred." In the particularly cold winter of 1964/65, he began working on the E-Type in a corner of the Caillet factory. Spent a lot of time drilling and machining all sorts of parts to reduce the weight of the E-Type. In the spring of 1965, the E-Type was almost ready for its first race: the 1000 km of Monza on April 25th. However, the racing tires supplied by Dunlop were much larger than Henny had intended, and Caillet also wanted to visit an old friend in Modena before the race.

The man in question was the legendary coachbuilder and racing driver Piero Drogo. He gave the Caillet-E-Type a distinctive bulge on the hood and side air intakes in front of the rear fenders as part of an innovative system for cooling the brakes. In addition to the lightened bodywork, the E-Type now featured Borrani wire wheels for the wider Dunlops, a 5-speed ZF gearbox, a special racing dashboard and a race-ready engine. We can only imagine how confident Caillet must have been heading into Monza.

However, he had another surprise in store for Henny: Caillet had booked the Modena Autodrom for test drives before Monza. At which none other than Juan Manual Fangio's personal mechanic, Guerino Bertocchi, was present to assess Henny's work on the newly modified Jaguar.

With Bertocchi's approval, the team set off for Monza, where the Jaguar private team's pit was right next to that of the Shelby racing team. Despite the language barrier, Henny quickly became friends with the Shelby mechanics, particularly a young man named Gordon Chance, who gave the E-Type team a can of Shelby's famous VHT heat-resistant paint. A paint that was also used on the exhaust of Shelby's own Daytona Coupe.

Despite the help of the Shelby mechanics, Caillet did not have a good race at Monza. It ended in a failure due to excessive oil temperatures on the differential. The solution was clear: a cooler had to be installed before the next race.

After Monza, Caillet and Henny continued at the Montjuich Circuit in Barcelona. Where Caillet found his rhythm for once and took home a 5th place. Encouraged by this result, they returned to Switzerland to overhaul the Jaguar again before heading off to the 1000km race at the infamous Nürburgring. For the classic scheduled for May 23, 1965, as in Monza, Andre Wicky was supposed to get into the cockpit again as the second driver, but first Caillet, who was unfamiliar with the numerous curves of the Green Hell, had to learn the urgently needed knowledge of the route.

Unfortunately, Caillet's concerns turned out to be justified. During training, he flew his E-Type hard into the embankment at the “airfield” at high speed, rolled over and was seriously injured again. Unconscious, he was taken to the nearby hospital in Adenau and from there transferred by helicopter to the Bonn clinic. Afterwards, Caillet was in a coma for several weeks; it would take years until he fully regained his memory.

Caillet's mother was understandably devastated and told Henny that the Caillets would never fund any racing adventures again. However, that wasn't the end for Henny. He later became a mechanic for Carroll Shelby himself and made a decisive contribution to the victory of the Ford GT Mk IV over Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1967.