Not everyone remembers the Jaguar XJR-15 and that’s a shame: this is the road-going version of the Le Mans-winning XJR-9 and the world’s first road-legal car with a carbon chassis and a carbon body.
Penned by Peter Stevens, who later designed the iconic McLaren F1, the Jaguar XJR-15 was basically a Le Mans racer with number plates.
The car was conceived by Tom Walkinshaw who brought in Stevens to turn Jaguar’s XJR-9 racer into a road-legal car. The cabin was slightly wider, the roof was raised to allow more headroom and that’s it. Even the driving position retained its mid-right hand configuration, with the gear lever mounted on the right.
Power is provided by a race-derived 6.0-liter V12 engine, making 450hp. A six-speed unsynchronized manual transmission was fitted as standard, but customers were offered a more civilized five-speed synchromesh transmission as an option. With the XJR-15 tipping the scales at 1,050kg (2,315lbs), 0-60mph came in 3.9 seconds while top speed was limited due to gearing to 191mph (307km/h).
Jaguar Sport, which was jointly owned by Jaguar and TWR, produced 53 examples of the XJR-15 between 1990 and 1992. Only 27 of them were built for road use, making this example featured in Petrolicious’ latest film a true unicorn and one of the rawest automobiles with number plates ever created.