Jaguar XJ220

This is the catalogue record of the Jaguar XJ220, one of 58 models Jaguar Cars has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The record places its introduction in 1992. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

To read the Jaguar XJ220 properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1990s were the decade of refinement — airbags and ABS became universal, Japanese build quality set the world standard, and the modern SUV segment was effectively invented. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the GM (General Motors) Hummer H1, the Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz C-Class, the Renault Renault Twingo — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Jaguar XJ220 reads like this: the record lists its engine as 6222 cc Jaguar V12 engine / Jaguar V12 (concept) / 3498 cc twin-turbocharged Austin-Rover V64V engine / Jaguar JRV-6 V6 engine / V6 (production version); quoted output is 507 PS / 400 lbft (concept) / 550 PS / 475 lbft (production version); kerb weight is recorded at 1470 kg; top speed is given as 213 km/h; drive goes through 5-speed manual; the layout is Rear mid-engine, four-wheel-drive layout / Rear mid-engine, all-wheel-drive (concept) / Rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout / Rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive (production ver. Worked together, those figures give roughly 345 horsepower per tonne — the single number that says more about how a car actually moves than any of its parts alone. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear. Production is recorded at 275 units, which makes it a genuine rarity — most enthusiasts will never see one in person.

Its place in the Jaguar Cars story

Within Jaguar Cars's own catalogue the Jaguar XJ220 sits alongside the Daimler Sovereign, the Jaguar 420 and Daimler Sovereign, the Jaguar Ascot, the Jaguar B99. The record names the Jaguar XJR-15 as its predecessor and the Jaguar C-X75 (spiritual) as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Keith Helfet under Jim Randle. Assembly is recorded at United Kingdom: Bloxham, Oxfordshire.

On the record

For the years the United States federal record covers, EPA-rated economy comes in at 19 mpg combined, which works out near $4,200 a year in fuel at current prices.

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

From catalogue to ownership

The catalogue records what the Jaguar XJ220 was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.