Stick to what you're good at Jag - big comfy sporty saloons, and decently priced high performance sports / GT's and you might even get another customer. The nose treatment on this car is suppose to preview the new XK replacement, so it looks like it could be an interesting new car..
The problem is that they stuck to their core market for quite a while and nobody bought their cars (S-Type, XJ). One can blame the styling ten years on but at the time it would have been seen as too radical a departure from the brand to do something that looked like the XF, because nobody looked at the mechanicals. And when the XF was launched it was openly derided, especially the headlights (shouldn't be a problem on here - wink!) but it's turned out to be a big seller. New XJ is currently outselling the rivals last time I saw, which is astonishing as the S-Class has been pick of the pops for quite a while.
Jaguar used to stand for the forefront of technical engineering within a reasonable budget: SS100, XK120, E-Type, XJ etc. As this car is going to be a teaser of how future cars will be styled it should be a technological tour-de-force IMO and the way it stands it knocks the Porsche 918 into a cocked hat, the tech is far more impressive.
As for the XJ220 being an also-ran... The only reason for this is that speculators started getting cold feet because very 'in' '80s things ended up getting chucked out: big, old, inefficient engine and pointless 4WD drivetrain. In came a race-bred, smaller, more efficient engine and proper RWD so all that power was channelled correctly. Add to that fantastic styling. End result? Fastest car in the world. Made by a bunch of blokes in their spare time on a Saturday.
It is quicker than either a 959 or EB110 and their values have not held up either. The McLaren F1's value didn't hold and they didn't manage to make a whole production run - not representative of the car though! The only reason the F40 is rapidly gaining value is speculators/Ferrari investment market. It's pretty depressing to be honest. The 'market' is a strange thing that can value a 250 GTO at 70k in the late '70s but 30 years on they fetch £12m. Cars should be assessed on their own merits, not in relation to value...
And, sorry to be a pedant, but the XJR-15 was not a 'real' Jaguar, it was TWR (and sold more as a racing car with its own marque series). Notorious for its pendulum-like handling, which is partially a characteristic of the V12 engine. The XJ220 doesn't have that problem.
