Jaguar XJ220

The Jaguar XJ220 began life as an unofficial after-hours project inside Jaguar and appeared as a dramatic concept in 1988, promising a V12 engine and four-wheel drive. By the time the car reached customers, Jaguar and its motorsport partner Tom Walkinshaw Racing had replaced that layout with a twin-turbocharged V6 driving the rear wheels. The change angered some buyers who had left deposits expecting the original specification, but it also produced a lighter, faster car than the show model had ever been.

Production ran from 1992 to 1994 at a purpose-built site in Bloxham, Oxfordshire, and around 275 examples were completed before the line closed. Weighing roughly 1470 kg, the aluminium-bodied coupe used its forced-induction V6 to set a top speed that briefly made it the fastest production car in the world; a run of 217.1 mph was recorded before the McLaren F1 eventually took the record.

The launch coincided with a sharp downturn in the supercar market, and the XJ220 was slow to sell; several depositors tried to cancel after the specification changed and the wider economy soured. In the decades since, the model has been reassessed as a genuine landmark of British engineering, an aerodynamically honed supercar whose compact twin-turbo V6 comfortably outran rivals carrying far more cylinders.