One to Buy: 153 miles from new 1991 Jaguar XJR-15
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The late 1980s supercar boom saw a rash of new and limited edition cars brought to market as manufacturers sought to capitalise on the red hot market for what rapidly became a new investment class following the stock market crash of October 1987.
Remarkably, two of the most spectacular creations from this crazy period wore the Jaguar badge.
The behemoth XJ220 was built around an aluminium and bonded honeycomb monocoque and twin turbocharged 3.5-litre V6. Incredibly, despite an anticipated £290,000 price the XJ220 was four times oversubscribed as around 1400 customers (many of whom were speculators) each dropped £50,000 to place a deposit for the new car.
Meanwhile, over at the TWR facility in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, an even more extreme machine was given the green light.
TWR had managed Jaguar’s competition programme since 1982 and based their new XJR-15 on the Le Mans 24 Hours-winning XJR-9 of 1988. Accordingly, the XJR-15 was based around a carbon Kevlar monocoque and powered by a normally aspirated six-litre V12 de-tuned to produce 450bhp.
Jaguar sanctioned a production run of 50 cars, each of which would retail at £550,000.
XJR-15 buyers could have their car configured in road or racing trim; the latter were eligible for the three-race F1-supporting Intercontinental Challenge, the winner of which would receive a cheque for $1m.
Of the 50 examples built, 27 were completed to road trim, one of which is set to go under the hammer at RM Sotheby’s Amelia Island auction on March 4th.
Chassis 042 was delivered to a collector in Asia in July 1991 where it remained on static display alongside a vast collection of high end exotics. It is offered with just 153 miles showing on the odometer.
