Things quickly change in the motoring industry, and what was once considered unthinkable, nowadays passes as mundane.

Jaguar arranged a playdate between the XJR and the Le Mans-winning XJR-9 LM at Silverstone, and put Andy Wallace – professional racing driver and Le Mans winner – at the wheel of both cars. Mind you, the automobiles weren’t pitted against each other, but rather compared in order to showcase how a normal, everyday automobile has come to perform better (in hard conditions) than a pure-bred racing automobile.

As a matter of fact, the track session presented the benefits of Jaguar’s new LED headlights technology in day and night driving conditions, with Wallace discussing the new car’s tech and comparing it to the old legend.

Of course, it’s rather silly to differentiate an apple and an orange, separated by a 30 year-old technological gap, but Jaguar tried to promote the XJRs new lighting technology by comparing it to a mythic endurance racer, especially as the primordial purpose of the 24h of Le Mans event was to challenge car manufacturers to come up with better, reliable illumination systems for the automobiles of the time.

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