Bob Tullius, a man synonymous with racing Jaguars Stateside, died on Monday, 16 March, at the age of 96.
Born in Rochester, New York, he passed away in Port Orange, Florida, not far from the Daytona International Speedway, the track at which he claimed his final race victory as a driver, in the 1986 three-hour race, sharing a XJR-7 with Chip Robinson.
His Group 44 team was the quasi-works entry for Jaguar as it looked to return to sports-car racing’s top table – only for Coventry to later look closer to home.
But Tullius had been the obvious fit. He had turned his amateur squad professional, and long been a big and enthusiastic supporter of the sports cars imported from Europe starting in the 1950s.
He successfully campaigned Triumphs in the blossoming Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) race series, but the 1970s brought his defining legacy: the Jaguar E-type – known as the XKE in North America.
It was a V12, unlike the earlier, more common XKE racing cars, and verged on a silhouette as it won the title 1975.
“XKEs did not want to be race cars! We battled that son-of-a-bitch all its life and we forced it to be one.
“It was a bear to drive and a bear to build,” Tullius recalled in an interview in the October 1999 edition of Classic & Sports Car.
A decade later, the XJR-5 returned Jaguar to Le Mans, with Tullius, Robinson and Claude Ballot-Léna winning their class in ’85, plus there were victories in the American IMSA series, but the TWR team's factory-backed effort was already in the works and Tullius was left in the cold.
