Copy cats

It’s not often you drive a car that’s both twice as old as you yet, at the same time, younger than every pair of socks you own. But this Jaguar C-type Continuation is exactly that – now in its 70th year and therefore double my own age, but not yet past its first birthday. 

Welcome to the curious world of continuation cars. These are newly built machines based on decades-old designs. Jaguar has leapt headfirst into the deep end of this slightly murky pool in recent years, its Jaguar Classic Works department steadily knocking out recreations of the marque’s most famous models.

A run of six Lightweight E-types came first in 2014. Jaguar would at long last produce the half-dozen cars that were planned as part of an 18-car production run way back in 1963 but weren’t actually built because buyers couldn’t be found. Those ‘missing’ six cars were manufactured eight years back and sold to preferred Jaguar collectors for £1m apiece.

It was a similar sort of conceit that justified nine new XKSS sports cars in 2016, generating almost £10m in revenue between them. Sir William Lyons had planned to build 25 of these very pretty D-type derived roadsters, but a devastating fire at Browns Lane meant only 16 left the factory.