THE XK120 might have been coming to the end of its life by1952 but when the British Racing Drivers’ Club was arranging that year's International Race of Champions at Silverstone on May 10, it still chose six identical examples of the now four-year-old car for the five-lap celebrity race.
The cars might have been the same, but the drivers the BRDC had invited were avaried bunch, including:
Johnny Claes, aBritish born Belgian who together with Jacques Ickx had won the 1951 Rome-Liege-Rome with an XK120
Baron Emmanuel de Graffenried, a Swiss Formula 1 driver and winner of the 1949 British Grand Prix
Paul Pietsch, a German driver who finished third at the 1935 Italian Grand Prix for Auto Union
Tony Gaze, the first Australian to take part in a Formula
