Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) New Jag Supercar

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.

More than a touch of the rose-tinted glasses here methinks, an alternative view of the engine is: "Austin Rover withdrew from the rallying scene at the end of the season, but in 1987 all the parts and engines were sold to Tom Walkinshaw Racing, whereupon the V6 engine reappeared under the bonnet of the Jaguar XJ220, this time with turbochargers added."


Sounds like your TWR is better than the other TWR! From what I remember at the time, Jaguar had to threaten many 'customers' with legal action to get them to take the cars that were ordered. This led to disgruntled customers, many of whom launched court cases against Jaguar for the radical changes in spec, only to lose, and this led ultimately to unsold 220s. To reduce costs the use of parts from mass production cars had been extensive; for example the rear view mirrors came from the Citroën CX 2 Series. It never was capable of the targeted 220 mph top speed either.

Compared to sports Jaguars from the past the car can only be judged as a failure even though a total of 281 cars were made and by 1997, few of these remained available for sale new at £150,000 (launch price £361,000). Nowadays, it remains a somewhat sought-after collectible sports car, fetching £100,000+, but really many feel that this is more due to its idiosyncrasies rather than its out and out merits.

Well, a little bit: after all, they are local to me and I am always going to be biased as it's a car I love!

I don't think the history of the engine particularly matters. At the end of the day the original concept showcased it as having a big, heavy V12 that was struggling to meet emissions regs. The 6R4 engine was race-bred, lighter and more efficient and not dissimilar to the current Group C car. It was superior in every way to the V12 originally proposed apart from nostalgia. People just have a thing - and seemed to particularly at the end of the '80s - about the number of cylinders in a car. What's more applicable is the right engine for the job.

If you did that today you would be applauded for 'adding lightness', being more like a racing car and increasing drivetrain efficiency. 4WD was the in-thing in the late '80s but supercars with it are derided for not being pure nowadays. It's automotive fashion and that's what gets my goat a bit. The engine and drivetrain change was for design reasons, not cost.

These days nobody remembers the 'little things' like the fact it had the best crash protection in the world and featured proper ground-effect aero, thus being the precursor to every modern supercar...

It also clocked a 7.46 lap of the Nurburgring (before it was cool) which is astonishing given the brake and tyre technology at the time.



Well, in a way, yeah. I mean, the XJ220 was TWR building to Jaguar design. The XJR-15 was all TWR who wanted to make a road-going race car as opposed to a road car. It has legendary handling issues though and is really a very different kind of car and closer in spirit to their previous Group C efforts, hence the XJR nomenclature.

I don't think Jag ever threatened customers with legal action (though I may be wrong), I think it was the other way round. Recession hit, speculators (who were probably the same people who made a few quid on the F40...) thought they were going to lose out, but they'd signed a contract and Jag gave them the option to buy out of it. They didn't like that but the court sided with Jaguar. I don't know the ins and the outs of it but if the same happened in the current market I'm not sure there would be much sympathy for those that have signed contracts. Again, times change.

As for use of parts from other cars, this is standard for pretty much any supercar. If this made it rubbish nobody would have bought an Enzo! Even the McLaren F1 uses ancillary bits from other cars, IIRC. And it was capable of the top speed, the 217mph was done on a bowl which equates to a larger straight-line speed of 223mph.

With modern engine management and a little bit of fettling from Don Laws I believe they put out in the region of 700bhp, and you can buy Group C style brake upgrades to match.

No car is perfect and the XJ220 has its flaws - then again so does the F40 and I love that too. I just think there are a lot of anecdotes that aren't wholly true and I think time will eventually be kind to it. Compared to its contemporaries it is/was impressive and quicker than all of them until the F1, replete with unlimited resources, came on to the scene.

I understand the sentiment, Head Office is also from that neck of the woods. However, it does read a bit like my minds made up, so don't bore me with the facts. Let me expatiate further, as I nearly put down a deposit for one of these, but couldn't justify it in the end; luckily as it turned out.



I think the engine is really part of the DNA of a car, and Jaguar's V12 is one of the classic engines, even if by the late 80's it was having difficulties with emissions. I am sure you will have read that it was designed as a racing engine for use in a Le Mans car and featured in the XJ13. Now that would have been a true Jaguar, if it had been developed and produced. It was productionised and launched in the E-Type, only Jaguar's second engine, and was fitted by Jaguar from 1971 to 1996.

On the other hand and from memory, the engine in the 6R4 was initially developed from the Rover V8 (of 1961 Buick parenthood) with 2-cylinders lopped off, and whilst it was rumoured that Cosworth had some input, due to its antecedents it was fundamentally not ideally balanced, but nevertheless this was not considered important as it was developed for use in a rally car.

Hey ho, this is the race developed engine that was cobbled together by TWR with added turbo's to replace the iconic Jaguar V12 that was promised for this car.

Like you I love the story of the team that developed the XJ220 working secretly out-of-hours, etc, but to my mind and many others the final product was a travesty of what was promised. What happened to the scissor doors, etc, etc...

In fact, the Jaguar Sport (TWR) produced Jaguar XJR-15, being based mechanically on the Le Mans-winning Jaguar XJR-9 with an aerodynamic body styled by Peter Stevens, was more of the Jaguar supercar than the XJ220, despite being produced for the track. Certainly, they had no difficulty selling the 50-planned at nearly $1 million a throw...

As we've now high-jacked this thread away from your original post, I'll now shut-up but it's good to remember the full history.

Hmmmm Brian has covered my other points but both EB110's and F1's are worth considerably more than XJ220's and so is a 959?? Unless I'm completely out of touch?

I'm pretty sure you couldn't get into any of the other three for less than £100k whereas is/was doable in a 220. I think the Jag also started further up the scale on price point than all three?

As for local nostalgia, SWMBO is a local and FiL spent all his working life at 'the Jag', Radford in particular signing off engines

EB110s languished and were a difficult sell for many years; however, the Veyron changed that.

Jaguar have not been know for their sporting prowess in recent years and the XJ220 (taking the cars aside) felt like a stallion in the paddock with a bunch of donkeys (the rest of the Jaguar range) - although Brian's point is well made, the 220 has the looks of a stallion but perhaps the engine of a donkey

A revised Jaguar supercar would probably help the appeal of the 220 but as the company has worked tirelessly to move away from their sporting heritage, perhaps they should just focus on making the best luxury cars in the market.

Not at all, my posts are a culmination of a long, long time thinking/reading/seeing the XJ220, from being a boy to recently having a ride in one which exceeded all expectations. I certainly don't mean to come across as pig-headed so sorry to anyone if that's the vibe they've had. My mind is never wholly made up because a justified opinion is never wrong, just different



No no, it's all relevant - after all, I certainly won't like it if they end up putting out a version without all the tech present in the concept car, that being the point of it.

The difference for me is that obviously I wasn't really fully aware at the time all of this stuff that was going on (being a lad who'd seen it at the motor show) and certainly not in a position to put a deposit down! I think this obviously affects my perspective because, such is life, opinions are formed of the experiences you have.

I'm not a huge fan of the Jag V12 - to me it only ever made sense in the XJ - so even the Le Mans connection doesn't really do it for me (though my Scalextric set most certainly had an XJR-9!).

By contrast I adore rallying (especially the Group B era) and the 6R4 and even though it's a bit of a bastardised engine it was developed by some very talented people (namely Patrick Head).

I suppose this is it: what's iconic to me is different than to you (and others). I just feel it is maligned and should be judged on its own merits as a car some 20 years on rather than Jag dropping a clanger with customers (which is relevant and provides lessons but doesn't to me lessen the impact the car had in terms of outright performance).



I didn't say they were worth less, just that their values had not held up.

As above, EB110 values were at an all-time-low before the launch of the Veyron. IIRC less than £100k would buy you a good EB110 a few years ago, with SS versions not being worth much more. List price of the GT when new was around £350k, God knows how much the SS was (still not enough to save the company). SS are being tucked away in collections now I think.

McLaren failed to sell as many F1s as they hoped and used values were considerably below the new price. I think the cheapest one auctioned off in the late '90s was about £400k! Again it's only recently that their values have started heading seriously north, more than doubling in the last few years from about £1m to as much as £3m now for a collection grade example.

959s are worth about £160k or so now I think, which is roughly half of what they cost new.

XJR-15s are weird, for a small-scale race car for the road you would expect values to be high but they go for about the same as an XJ220, despite costing over twice as much and in some ways being much closer to the original 220 concept. I really don't understand why this is, which is why it's pointless judging a car by market value it seems!

What a kerfuffle!

A friend of mine placed an order for an XJ220 when the list was opened in those bright and sunny times of optimism.

When the final production car was unleashed and he read the real spec he was shocked and disgusted. Not because the car was rubbish but due to the total lack of "super" shown before and used to secure the deposit.

He cancelled, they did repeatedly threaten action so he got a VERY strong solicitors letter sent to them and they backed down.

I must admit I thought the entire car rather unresolved and a bit of a lash up compared to the depth of the EB110. Given the option I would have had the 6R4 and the money. When I visit RCT I always see a Delta Integrale and wonder what it would have been like to buy one.