Fast & furious
THERE’S ALWAYS a moment when driving even the highest of performance cars when it becomes a little easier, and you start to feel more comfortable with the handling, brakes and eventually the power. You might even forget about crashing for a moment, manage to put aside the images of fireballs and start to enjoy the experience.
This never happened for me with this XJR-15. Even after ten laps behind the wheel, I remained as scared as I did when I first pulled down my visor and accelerated on to Mallory Park’s main straight. As a ferocious, fearsome and frantic car, it retains much of the character of the Le Mans-winning XJR-9 from 1988 on which it’s partly based.
It’s also a car that’s always been misunderstood. Instigated and produced by Tom Walkinshaw Racing with little input from Jaguar and only produced in tiny numbers, little is known about its history, meaning the car has become overlooked in favour of other supercars of the era including its XJ220 sibling.
To try and understand the XJR-15 a little more, we speak to those involved during its development, before driving the original 1991 prototype at Mallory Park.
According to TWR’s then marketing director, Richard West, the catalyst for the car was the team’s victory at the 1988 Le Mans 24 Hours race with the Jaguar XJR-9.
“When Jan Lammers, Johnny Dumfries and Andy Wallace won that race, Andy Morrison, the technical director of TWR’s Special Vehicle Operations, said to Tom Walkinshaw he reckoned there was mileage in developing a road car version.” Due to the other low-volume but high-priced models from around the same time – including the Ferrari F40 and Porsche 959 – proving there was a market for such a car, Walkinshaw was interested.
Despite some being eventually registered for the road, from the outset Richard is adamant the car – which was originally designated the R9R – was always meant for the track. “It would have been impossible to get type approval for it,” he tells me. “So in every single contract, it was made very clear these were racing and not road cars.”
Since Jaguar came to TWR
