When I grow up, I want to be a jaguar
11/11/2024
Isn't it cute how this Crosley Hotshot pretends to be a Jaguar XK 120? Yet the small 27 hp vehicle with the 44 cubic inch four-cylinder engine actually has no reason to hide its true identity - especially not behind that of the big English cat. In contrast to the Jaguar, which was almost six times as powerful, the Crosley already had disc brakes on all four wheels.
A spontaneously deployed Hotshot even won the very first car race held on the Hendricks Army Airfield in Sebring: the six-hour race on December 31, 1950. However, the final classification was not based on the absolute distance covered, but on the so-called index: the ratio of the race distance covered to a previously calculated target distance, which in turn was derived from the engine capacity.
Measured by the size of its engine, the little roadster therefore performed better than all the Ferraris, Allards and Aston Martins in the field. The best Jaguar finished in 18th place, so basically you would have to convert your XK 120 to hotshot optics. That would look something like the picture below.
