TWIN TEST 1988 LE MANS EDITIONS
After winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1988, Jaguar celebrated with a limited edition XJ-S. Over three decades later, it's still celebrating the same victory with a special edition F-Pace
FROM THE E-Type’s 1961 Geneva launch to beingtaken over by Ford 27 years later, there have been plenty of key moments in Jaguar’s long history. But few have had a car named after them and fewer still have had two. But Jaguar’s victory of the 1988
Yet while the first, the XJR-S Le Mans Celebration, marked the start of Jaguar's faster breed of cars, the second, the F-Pace SVR Edition 1988, is potentially the end. To explain the significance of the race and the two models it inspired, we've gathered an example of these two rare yet important Jaguars together.
Ever since the former Unipart and Massey Ferguson director, (Sir) John Egan, had taken over as Jaguar’s chairman in 1980, he’d wanted to take the company back to the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans. He understood a potential sixth victory of a race it had once ruled over 25 years earlier offered significant marketing opportunities for its road cars.
"I was extremely impressed by the way other manufacturers, especially BMW, exploited their racing programmes with value-added 'racing inspired' extensions to the current range/' he wrote in his 2015 biography Saving Jaguar.
Despite still trying to modernise and streamline the company after several years in the financial wilderness, Egan gave the company's support to two independent racing programmes he hoped would lead Jaguar back to Le Mans. One was a sports racing car for the American IMSA championship developed by Bob Tullius’ Group 44 team which had previously competed with an E-Type Series 3 that was followed by an XJ-S. After debuting towards the end of the 1982 season, the team’s V12-engined XJR-5 became successful, winning four races the following year.
In 199984 Jaguar reckoned the XJR-5 could be competitive at Le Mans and transported two examples to France, the first time the brand had entered the race since 1964. Although both retired, they had run consistently in the top ten, encouraging Group 44 to return the following year when one finished in 13th position.
The second was Tom Walkinshaw’s TWR outfit which had spotted that the XJ-S offereddd a better power-to-weight ratio than the BMW 528 or 635 and wanted to enter the V12-engined car into the 1982 European Touring Car Championship.
“If Jaguar could give sufficient financial support, his TWR organisation could develop the car into a winner,” continued Egan. He was quickly proven right. In 1984 TWR took the manufacturer’s title for Jaguar while Walkinshaw himself won the driver’s championship.
“One of the reasons we were so dominant was that TWR and Jaguar engineering
