Silk Purple

Silk Purple, the purple of the Group C endurance Jaguars

Purple appears only rarely in the world of racing cars, which made the livery this shade is named after all the more impossible to miss. The British Jaguar prototypes, built by the team that brought the marque back to the top of endurance racing, ran in the second half of the 1980s in precisely this purple, set off by white panels and lettering. On the circuits of the day, where white, red and blue prevailed, it was a color a spectator picked out of the field at once.

The era the shade covers

The XJR-8 brought the marque the world sports prototype championship title in 1987, a year later Jaguar won the twenty-four hours of Le Mans with the XJR-9, and in 1990 it repeated the overall win with the XJR-12. Purple was the base color of the bodywork throughout that time. The shade has a metallic character, so over the large surfaces of a prototype it changes tone with the angle of view and the curves of the body read by themselves on a model.

Who the color is for

• for builders of Group C prototypes in the usual car scales
• for fans of British endurance cars of the late 1980s
• for collectors of winners of the twenty-four hours of Le Mans
• for modelers looking for a purple with a bodywork rather than a figure-painting character

The purple comes out differently in period photographs depending on the light and the film used, so take several photographs for comparison rather than a single one.