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We sample a 1987 JaguarSport XJ-S first owned by TWR’s Tom Walkinshaw and featuring a unique 6.4-litre V12.
BY ALL accounts, Tom Walkinshaw was a big man with an even bigger personality. You don't win the European Touring Car Championship or facilitate Jaguar's sixth and seventh Le Mans victories by being a shrinking violet.
As Jaguar's former chairman, Sir John Egan, says about Walkinshaw in his 2015 biography, Saving Jaguar, "He was part tornado, part rugby front-row forward and part mystical leprechaun."
Clearly such a man wouldn't drive an ordinary car and it seems even a standard XJ-S wasn't quite powerful enough because in 1987 TWR built a unique 6.4-|itre model for his personal use. Hard to miss with huge amounts of power, it was the perfect match for this larger-than-life character.
Born in Midlothian, Scotland, on 14 August 1946, Walkinshaw started racing when he was 22 with an MG Midget before changing up to a Lotus 61 single seater. He quickly showed his talent by winning the 1970 Scottish FF1600 title in a Hawke, later moving to the works March team. The turning point came in 1974 when he was hired by Ford to drive a Capri in the British Touring Car Championship when he won his class.
Although the Ford contract gave him access to the Cosworth V6 for use in Formula 5000, from the mid-Seventies onwards he concentrated on touring cars, joining forces with BMW in 1976 for the World Championship of Makes driving a CSL and winning the Silverstone Six Hours.
He could have stayed as a works driver but with an eye on the future he started Tom Walkinshaw Racing in 1976 to develop, build and race touring cars. Its first was a BMW 530i for the BTCC in 1977 when it gave the all-conquering Capri a stiff challenge.
Walkinshaw soon added other manufacturers to TWR’s rostrum including Mazda, Audi and Rover. “He obviously had a master plan, but we never sat down and discussed where we were going,” said TWR’s first employee, Eddie Hinckley, during a 2011 interview. “It just seemed to roll along at a rapid rate! Obviously he was a great motivator, but it was hard work because there weren’t many of us initially. He was certainly very dynamic.”
Yet TWR is arguably best known for its long and extremely successful partnership with Jaguar which began in the early Eighties. Since the V12-engined XJ-S had a better power-to-weight ratio than a BMW 635, Walkinshaw reckoned it would be competitive in the European Touring Car Championship and in 1981 the Scot headed to Browns Lane. “He took his time explaining his case,” continued Egan in Saving Jaguar, “and told me that by some strange magic known only to him, we could, admittedly at great cost, make our V12 XJ-S win the European Touring car Championship, with him as
