The annual reenactment of the Mille Miglia 1000 mile road race on public roads gets underway on Wednesday, with Jaguar Heritage Racing involved in the event to celebrate the 60th anniversary of developing the disc brake.
Jaguar Heritage Racing will field a six-car team in the 2012 Mille Miglia on the 60th anniversary of its entering a C-type equipped with a prototype disc-brake system in the 1952. That 1952 Mille Miglia entry represented the first competitive endurance test in Jaguar's development of disc-brakes for eventual wide-scale road car use.
Behind the wheel of that disc-braked equipped C-type in the 1952 Mille Miglia was Sir Stirling Moss, and alongside him was Norman Dewis, then Jaguar's chief development engineer.
In 2012, Moss and Dewis, now 82 and 91 years of age respectively, will once again take the start of the Mille Miglia in a C-type.
This particular C-type, XKC 005, is also the same car which, later in 1952, Sir Stirling Moss drove to victory in a sports car race at Reims to record the first ever win for a disc-braked car.
The 2012 Mille Miglia is the first competitive outing for the Jaguar Heritage Racing program which, later this year, will also see works-backed C- and D-types race competitively for the first time since 1956 at both the Nürburgring Oldtimer Grand Prix and the Goodwood Revival.