Jaguar XJR prototypes
The Jaguar XJR prototypes were racing cars for sports car series.
In the 1980s, Jaguar was very successfully involved in Group C racing for sports car prototypes , first with Bob Tullius in the USA and then Tom Walkinshaw with his racing team TWR in Europe .
Bob Tullius and his Group 44 racing team have already been successful with various models from the Leyland Group . In particular, he won the B-Production Championship of the Sports Car Club of America for the Northeastern States in 1974 with the Jaguar E-Type V12 and that of the entire USA the following year. With the XJ-S , he became champion of the Trans-Am category 1 in 1977 and second in the Silhouette racing formula of the Trans Am in 1981.
In 1982 he built a sports prototype based on Lee Dykstra's design with the tried and tested Jaguar V12 engine behind the pilot and named it the XJR-5 . This car finished second in the IMSA championship in 1983 and was the first Jaguar in twenty years to take part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1984 . This was followed for the 1986 racing season by the XJR-7 , which this year could only win the 3-hour race in Daytona at the IMSA championship.
After only two more IMSA victories in 1987 in Riverside and West Palm Beach, Jaguar has now switched to the British racing team Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR) for the US races. A third car built by Tullius in 1988, which he defiantly called the XJR-8 , although he had already lost the contract with Jaguar and although the type designation had already been used by TWR in 1987, was listed once more at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1988 the now official type designation Group 44 V12 was used, but was canceled, while the Jaguar XJR-9 from TWR achieved overall victory in this race.
The Briton Tom Walkinshaw had a Jaguar factory team from 1982 to 1984 with a Jaguar XJ-S of the group A , the European Touring Car Championship successfully disputed. Walkinshaw and his team therefore tackled the construction of a racing prototype for the World Sports Car Championship . The racing car called XJR-6 was used for the first time in August 1985 and was able to win its first race for the World Sports Car Championship, the 1000 km from Silverstone, in May 1986.
This and its successors, the XJR-8 from 1987 and the XJR-9 from 1988, all designed by Tony Southgate , were very successful, winning the title in the sports car world championship in 1987 and 1988 as well as the overall victory in the 24-hour race of Le Mans 1988 . The final stage of development of these Jaguar sports prototypes with the large-volume naturally aspirated V12 engines, the XJR-12 , again achieved overall victory in the 24-hour race in Daytona in 1990, a racing event that was particularly noted in America, and also overall victory in the 24th in 1990 -Hours of Le Mans. In 1991, at the end of its racing career (the 3.5-liter displacement formula had come into effect at the World Sports Car Championship), the XJR-12 finished in 2nd, 3rd and 4th place in Le Mans and in the 1992 24 Hours of Daytona the second place.
In 1989, Tom Walkinshaw switched to the US with the XJR-10 - a three-liter model for the American IMSA championship - and in Europe in 1990 with the XJR-11 (3.5 liter for the World Sports Car Championship) to V6- Turbocharged engines taken from the MG Metro 6R4 . The change was made because Tony Southgate was able to lower the center of gravity of the Jaguar racing prototypes with this more compact machine. In 1990, however, only a single victory could be achieved in the English round of the World Sports Car Championship in Silverstone. In the IMSA championship things went a little better with two wins in 1989 and 1990, but the championship could not be won here either. That is why it followed in 1991 with the XJR-14 , now designed by Ross Brawn and powered by a 3.5-liter V8 naturally aspirated V8 engine from Formula 1 , a radical new design that dominated the competition at will and the sports car world championship early on 1991 could decide for himself.
After Jaguar withdrew from this racing series at the end of 1991, Mazda ordered some XJR-14 chassis from TWR (Tom Walkinshaw Racing) and equipped them for the 1992 racing season with a naturally aspirated V-10 engine from Judd, which was simply too weak to be able to do something against the competition. The career of the XJR-14 was far from over. In the 1992 IMSA series, there were two victories at Road Atlanta and Mid-Ohio. And finally this legendary chassis, now equipped with a Porsche engine, won the Daytona 24 Hours in 1995 and the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1996 and 1997 as TWR-Porsche.
The Jaguar XJR-15 from Jaguar Sport, a consortium of Jaguar and TWR, was designed as a two-seater mid-engine sports car for the road and was based on the XJR-9.
The Jaguar XJR-16 was built in 1991 exclusively for use in the IMSA series and was the most successful car of that year with four wins.
