Looking forward to watching!
Reaching 200,000 miles is an outstanding achievement - do you have any idea how much engine/transmission work it’s had over the years beyond routine servicing?
It's the used car everyone would want to buy! Really low mileage, never raced or rallied....NOT!
As is was a development car, then a race car it has undergone some considerable work.
Here is an extract from the details I leave on the screen when I take it to shows.
- The first XJ220 to exceed 200mph
- The first XJ220 to 200,000 miles
- Multi-race winning car.
004 rolled out in April 1991 to start its rigorous life as a hot climate, high speed tyre development and durability car. It was only the second car to be hand built using production intent body tooling as a ‘fully engineered prototype’
By May 26th it had already eclipsed the 200mph mark driven by Chief Development Engineer Alastair Macqueen at the Bridgestone proving ground in Fort Stockton, Texas. The following week it would lap the 8 mile oval at an average speed of 213mph in the capable hands of Jaguar Le Mans winner Andy Wallace.
After a heavy programme of development throughout the summer it would accompany its very slightly younger blue sister car 005 to the Nurburgring in September now painted in a Jaguar production intent red colour. 005 stole the limelight by setting a production car lap record of 7’46’’ which would stand for 7 years with another Jaguar Le Mans winner John Nielsen at the wheel. 004 pounded around for days doing chassis, tyre and engine development work. It was also driven back to base from Germany to clock up the first international XJ220 road trip and be the first 220 on a hovercraft!
004 then was assigned the very unglamorous task of becoming the gearbox durability car. It was to spend months at Millbrook on a very prescriptive transmission torture routine to sign off all the gearbox components. General durability and fault rectification duties followed in 1992.
Jaguar Sport sold off a very small number of former development cars to race teams at the end of the programme. 004 was bought by Chamberlain Racing and started a new and more glamorous life as a race car in the 1995 British GT Championship and selected FIA GT Races. This particular car, 004 was painted as a monster car for a film project before languishing in retirement at Chamberlain.
It was purchased by Don Law Racing in 1998, prepared by them and raced in the Intermarque Championship in 1999 driven by Win Percy where it proved to be a race winner, obtained pole position at every race, took lap records, and won the 1999 Class C Intermarque Cup for the front running cars.
In 2000 Don Law Racing ran the first pilot race for the new Group C Historic Championship and with Win Percy in an XJR-11 Group C car, driving duties for XJ220 004 passed on to Justin Law. Justin continued to race the car both in the Intermarque Championship and in the GT Class of Historic Group C Racing. When Justin moved on to Group C with the Castrol XJR-10 in 2001, XJ220 004 was put into retirement.
Justin made a decision some time in 2005 to put XJ220 004 back into full road trim. Fortunately all of the original standard trim parts had been acquired with the car and it was rebuilt in its original silver livery after its multi-coloured life as a race car. The engine was also upgraded to full S spec with 680 brake horsepower. Since then, 004 has covered around a further 50,000 miles and been driven by scores of journalists, used by numerous film crews, and continues to be used as a promotional tool for the business
In September 2016 the car really did return to its roots when, after a 25 year gap, it once again became the primary development car for a brand new breed of Bridgestone tyres. Spending almost four months based at Bridgestone’s facility near Rome, 004 undertook
the rigorous duties of a tyre test and development car, covering thousands of test milesat speeds of up to 200mph, without complaint.
The car is now a veteran of around 200,000 really hard miles. Amazingly, it has never suffered any serious damage, so carries all the original aluminium bodywork. It is a great testament to the incredible design of the XJ220 that the honeycomb chassis has survived all this extreme endurance testing with absolutely no issues.
XJ220 004 has pushed the boundaries of performance and durability for all XJ220’s to become an important, heroic and historic car.
It has never been a ‘garage queen’, but it was driven here today by A Macqueen…...
