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| Too much of a handful here |
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The XJS was also rather long in the tooth before it too had its moment in the motor racing sun. Unlike the E-type however, the plan had been to contest the then coveted European Touring Car Championship with the XJS when it was brand new back in 1976 but, British Leyland being what it was then, it proved impossible to homologate the car on time and they had to resort to the large and unwieldy XJ12 coupe, a car that had never been designed with racing in mind. Despite this, and thanks to Ralph Broad's ace tuning company, Broadspeed, the XJ12C proved staggeringly fast, qualifying in pole position almost everywhere it went and denied the victories its pace deserved through appalling unreliability. It never won a thing and is now unfairly but understandably regarded as a white elephant.
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| Most successful XJS of all |
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Fingers well and truly burned, it would be 1982 before Jaguar, under the guidance of John Egan and with one eye on the company's forthcoming privatisation, turned once more to racing. This time it was Tom Walkinshaw's TWR group that got the job. Walkinshaw duly turned the rather soft long distance cruiser that was the XJS into the quickest touring car of its generation.
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It started well, winning a race in 1982 and coming second in the championship; in 1983 five wins were notched up but it still just missed out to BMW. But no mistake was made in 1984: seven wins brought the championship to Walkinshaw and his victory, driving with Win Percy, in the Spa 24 hours brought Jaguar its first 24-hour win since Le Mans in 1957. It was enough to convince Jaguar that the time was right to return to Le Mans and TWR was duly entrusted with the programme. The resulting series of factory Group C XJR racers won in their debut season in 1986, took the world's sportscar championship in '87 and victory at Le Mans in '88.
The XJS I am driving is the most famous and successful of all, Walkinshaw's wheels for the '84 season and winner of that great race at Spa.
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