The big question everybody must be wondering about is whether that vacuum cleaner is electric or a plug-in hybrid. Maybe it simply has an internal combustion engine?

Hope you did not take it badly. I understand that maybe loadsawork tight deadlines and such.

Are you sure the car pictured is a Chapparal 2J? It very much looks like a Chaparral 2J to me.

No disrespect intended, by the way, to Mr Taco, just a friendly correction.

Unless you really wanted to install a set of drawers [Spanish cajones] under the dashboard or something, the word you need is cojones.

I think it is the other way round. Of course they have the ability to build “new sports cars”, as you say, but they want to keep alive the Jaguar legend and, make their customers of newer cars feel they are indeed buying into all the rich Jaguar tradition (and that its spirit is not being diluted).

In the very late 80s – with Victor Gauntlett still as chairman – Aston Martin also manufactured a batch of official Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato “continuation” cars (almost complete replicas), with chassis numbers that had not been used at the time. Those were called the “Sanction II” cars. There are also “Sanction III”…

Er, does he own four or them, or all these just happened to be in his stables at the time the picture was taken?

Jaguar did build some aluminium XK blocks, back in the day, precisely for racing. I am not trying to say the “new sanction” Lightweights do not have an updated block: it would be interesting to know.

Something simpler: why not a new-build Chrysler Norseman, like the one still in the holds of the Andrea Doria?

The usual joke about distinguishing a Stratos replica from a real one is “if panel fit is bad and shutlines are over the place it is a Bertone-built original”...

Making a true replica Stratos would be several orders of magnitude easier than building a 100% correct replica of the 917, with its huge Typ 912 engine and its nitrogen-filled tube chassis.

Actually a couple of Transformer/Hawk replicas were indeed built with Dino V6 engines. I suppose that was before Dinos became so exceedingly valuable.

Yup. But then I don’t think you are supposed to zip up and down the Col de Turini with those.

It is not so simple. The engine in the XJ13 is a very early version of the V12, and not quite the same. I wonder if there are big block or internal differences, but for sure the XJ13 was a twincam unit.

Those “chromed” wheels in McQueen’s (or anybody else’s) XKSS were, if I remember correctly, magnesium.

I know that GT40s had been used as rally cars, back in the day, but information on them is not easy to come across. It seems it mostly happened in France (and no, I am not thinking of the Tour de France Automobile). I seem to remember maybe in Britain too, but haven’t found anything yet.

Below – a bit of a rarity. Chassis 1033 during the Rallye de l’Ouest, in 1970. Michel Martin driving, P. Chini navigating.

Thanks for your answer. Much appreciated!

$kaycog, may I ask you a couple of questions? Is there a particular version or variant of GT40 you like better than the others? Maybe the rare open (“sports”) one?