History
of Jaguar Motorsport
 The
company has had major success in sports car racing, particularly in the Le Mans
24 Hours. Victories came in 1951 and 1953 with the C-Type, then in 1955, 1956
and 1957 with the D-Type. The manager of the racing team during this period, Lofty
England, later went on to become CEO of Jaguar in the early 1970s. Although the
prototype XJ13 was built in the mid-1960s it was never raced, and the famous race
was then left for many years, until in the mid-1980s when Tom Walkinshaw's TWR
team started designing and preparing Jaguar V12-engined sports prototypes for
European sports car races. The team started winning regularly from 1987, and with
increased factory backing the team won Le Mans in 1988 and 1990.
In the 1999, Ford decided that Jaguar would be the corporation's Formula One entry.
Ford bought out the Stewart Grand Prix team and rebranded it as Jaguar Racing
for the 2000 season. The Jaguar F1 program was not a success however, achieving
only two podium finishes in five seasons of competition between 2000 and 2004.
At the end of 2004, with costs mounting and Ford's profits dwindling, the F1 team
was seen as an unneeded expense and was sold to Red Bull energy drinks owner Dietrich
Mateschitz, and it became Red Bull Racing. Since 2004 Jaguar has not had an official
presence in motorsport.
Jaguar merged with the British Motor Corporation (BMC), the Austin-Morris combine,
to form British Motor Holdings (BMH) in 1966. After merging with Leyland, which
had already taken over Rover and Standard Triumph, the resultant company then
became the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) in 1968. Financial difficulties
and the publication of the Ryder Report led to effective nationalisation in 1975
and the company became British Leyland, Ltd. (later simply BL plc).
In the 1970s the Jaguar and Daimler marques formed part of BL's specialist car
division or Jaguar Rover Triumph Ltd until a restructure in the early 1980s saw
most of the BL volume car manufacturing side becoming the Austin Rover Group within
which Jaguar was not included. In 1984, Jaguar was floated off as a separate company
on the stock market — one of the Thatcher government's many privatisations.
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