EXPERIENCE ONE OF THE RAWEST SUPERCARS BUILT, THE XJR-15
991 Jaguar XJR-15 to experience one of the coolest supercars of the 20th century. Aimed at transferring the Le Mans-winning XJR experience to the road, just 53 examples of the XJR-15 were produced with the help of Tom Walkinshaw under the banner of Jaguar Sport, and only 27 were optioned for road use. Powered by a beautifully shrill six-liter V12, it’s a lesser known but no less sexy staple of 1990s supercardom, and one of the finest examples of a “race car for the road,” of any decade.
It’s built to be used on the street, but just barely. The chassis tub for instance was a slightly modified version of the one found in the racing XJR-9 (which was previously developed by Tom Walkinshaw into a very successful racer that won outright at the 1988 24 Hours of Le Mans among other things). The bodywork for the XJR-15 was designed by Peter Stevens, who then went on to draw the most famous supercar of all time, the McLaren F1. It weighs in at just over 2,300lbs and churns about 450 horsepower inside its naturally aspirated V12. It takes less than three and a half seconds to hit 60 from a standstill. In other words, the XJR-15 had all the right ingredients.
Which is why it’s odd that it doesn’t seem to be as popular as one might imagine. Perhaps its rarity is a factor in that, but there are plenty of cars that have fewer siblings and more notoriety. Jaguar claimed to have built the XJR-15 so it could compete in a few pre-F1 races known as the Jaguar Sport Intercontinental Challenge, similar to the M1 ProCar program, but those races were never going to go down in history the way some racers gain pedigree on the circuit. There is no one thing to explain the relative obscurity of this hyper Jag, yet it does so many things to such a higher degree than its peers.
It’s a car that can recalibrate all five of your senses, and one that leaves you coming down off the experience for longer than the drive itself. There aren’t many machines out there with those powers, then or now.
