1988 JaguarSport XJR-S V12 Celebration Le Mans - 2,597 Miles

The Jaguar Legacy Collection.

A carefully collated collection of landmark sporting Jaguars from the past 65 years, each one bringing something special, museum quality, very low mileage, value for money motoring or, some simply being the 'best of breed'

Arguably the closest the British ever got to our own Shelby Mustang was the XJR-S. A unique partnership between Tom Walkinshaw and Jaguar, which lasted a decade and was perhaps the last of its kind. The 1984 European Touring Car Championship win by Tom Walkinshaw behind the wheel of a Jaguar XJ-S started it all. During this time, Walkinshaw was also producing body and suspension kits for the XJ-S at his JaguarSport company, offering significant improvements over the standard XJ-S, leading to the factory authorising an official model incorporating TWR upgrades - the XJR-S. Owned 50/50 by Jaguar and TWR, JaguarSport released a special version of the XJR-S in 1988 which featured the 5.3-litre V12 engine, a unique body kit, alloy wheels and suspension and handling improvements.

JaguarSport produced a special edition of these new XJR-S 'Celebration Le Mans' models to commemorate Jaguar's win at the Le Mans 24-Hour race in 1988, each individually numbered. The JaguarSport model added extra leather trim, motifs to the foot plates, 'Growler' bonnet badge, JaguarSport alloy wheels and de-chroming. Only 100 examples were built and this car, #054, was supplied to its first owner, a Mr. Bishop, by TWR Jaguar Ltd of Leamington Spa, in Tungsten with a Cream Connolly leather interior and first registered on 26th October 1988.

The history file is among the finest we have seen for the model and includes the original order confirmation letters between Mr Bishop and TWR Jaguar Ltd, together with further correspondence that includes an invitation to the JaguarSport Celebration Day at Silverstone on 31st October 1988, offering a lap of the circuit in one of the Le Mans-winning XJR-9 cars, as a passenger, naturally! According to previous sales information, Mr Bishop enjoyed the car sparingly for two years before putting the Jaguar into climate-controlled storage facilities and remained the first of two former keepers for 30 years. It was with its second owner briefly between 2019 and 2020, when it was sold and entered the Jaguar Legacy Collection, as we know it today.

Used as a roadgoing example of the JaguarSport collaboration, it was featured in side profile along with its interior and captioned as car #054 in Jonathan Woods’ book Jaguar: The Legend, a copy of which is generously included. The car can be found between the preceding chapter about the XJR-9 and by later chapter on the XJ220, all of which were made possible by Tom Walkinshaw and his team. Presented with its original handbooks within the embossed XJR-S folio, aforementioned correspondence, historic receipts, period magazines and brochures dating from 1988 and supplied with a fresh MOT.

Given the age and the mileage of just 2,597 from new, this is almost certainly an unrepeatable opportunity to purchase an early and rare museum-quality example of British sporting history. Jaguar and TWR’s collaboration on this model is perhaps the last true manufacturer-race engineering partnership of its era.