Launched almost immediately after World War II, Jaguar's original XK120 burst onto the scene as the world's fastest production car. Nearly a half-century later, with the likes of Porsche and Ferrari wrestling over top-speed bragging rights, the XK220 grabbed the brass ring again, first running at just over 212 mph and then 217 mph. But while Stuttgart's 959 and Maranello's F40 are undisputed icons of their time, Jaguar's world-beater is somewhat overlooked. It shouldn't be.
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Check out this example, up for sale on Bring a Trailer (which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos). It's a 1993 Jaguar XJ220 in sumptuous Le Mans Blue, with impeccably low mileage. It has an unusual but pristine provenance, having spent a dozen years hanging out in the middle of a Tokyo skyscraper before being imported into Los Angeles and appearing on an episode of Jay Leno's Garage. It has certification from Jaguar's heritage operations, and the equivalent of just 5000 miles on the odometer.
While it could be argued that British Racing Green is the signature color for an XJ220, Le Mans Blue both looks fantastic here and pays homage to Jaguar's heritage at France's greatest endurance race. In the 1950s, Jag's D-types were the apex predators at the Circuit de la Sarthe, and Jaguar was again on top in 1988, winning Le Mans with the V-12-powered XJR-9 the same year that the prototype XJ220 was revealed.
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That prototype also featured 12-cylinder power, and here's where the XJ220 story stumbles a little. Instead of a V-12, the production cars got a twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter V-6. The engine had genuine rally-car heritage, and today, few people would complain about the V-6 in a Ferrari 296 GTB. But, in the early 1990s, six cylinders was a half dozen too few to be a proper exotic.
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However, it was certainly powerful enough to beat Ferrari and Porsche. In this application, the twin-turbo V-6 makes 542 horsepower and 475 pound-feet of torque. Those are respectable figures today, and in a time when a 911 Turbo made do with nearly 200 fewer ponies, the XJ220 was a genuine monster. The transmission is a five-speed manual, sending power to the rear wheels only.
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