Tom Cat

Handsome it ain’t. Presence it has. And that colour. The intention is XJR-14 Silk Cut, but it’s also giving me strong Diablo SE30 vibes. Bold choice. Especially to carry it on to the wheels. The dish isn’t right on the fronts at the moment. This is the final validation prototype before production of a planned 88 cars starts, finished just in time for the Festival of Speed, and one or two minor niggles have yet to be exorcised. Inside the centre console panel will be remade (likely in carbon), the heating controls will gain more appropriate lettering and the steering wheel will be 20mm smaller and more dished. But it does have cupholders, USB ports and Apple CarPlay.

It’s not been an easy or quick job to get here since the car was first seen as a digital render over two years ago. The XJ-S, bless it, was not renowned for its build quality or reliability, so the team has had massive work to do all the way along the line. Donor V12 XJ-Ss are stripped back to a bare chassis (that and the engine block are kept so the car retains its original identity). The frame is braced and reinforced to a huge degree, including the addition of a built-in roll cage, new front subframe and crash structures. The rear seats are ditched, the rear bulkhead is opened through making an already vast load bay considerably more vast when the panel is dropped into its neat recess, and a giant 100-litre fuel tank sits underneath.

It has the potential to be a world class grand tourer. A 400-mile range is on the cards even with its likely gluttonous thirst for fuel. Suit bags and golf clubs would sit happily side by side. The options list includes a four-piece luggage set. But in attitude and demeanour the driving experience is matched to the outward appearance.

Yes, it’ll sit in sixth, pulling a little over 2000rpm and track straight. You’ll be enjoying a soft seat and a view down a long bonnet. But it’s a view punctuated by vents and mesh and inside you never quite escape the commotion from the suspension and tyres, a tussle of wind noise. Twist the TracTive suspension back to comfort and there’s a detectable softness in the primary ride at the rear as it breathes with the road, but on the whole this is not a calm, quiet car.

Did you want it to be? Of course not. But owners may well expect the duality that modern supercars seem so adept at delivering. Restomods, given their period underpinnings and relative lack of development budgets, naturally find that balance trickier. Best way to think of the Supercat? It’s a muscle car. Everything it does is muscular and requires muscle.

The control weights are heavy. The clutch will make your quads twitch, the brakes, behind the hard pedal, are barely assisted so you’ve just got to keep pushing. I was nervous for Fergus when he told me the power steering was electric, but there’s so little assistance that what comes through the rim does so with complete clarity. At a standstill you’re wrenching at it (they’re looking at dialling in a bit more help) and even at speed it retains considerable heft.

Keep in the forefront of your mind that it’s a 1980s bruiser and you won’t go far wrong. You get feedback, but this is not the delicate nuance and writhing steering of a 911, it’s a comms bombardment on all channels. What is modern is the sheer amount of mechanical grip and the good work done by the Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres (should be Dunlops, no?). Body control is tight, the chassis stiff, the steering quick and direct and the overall balance is lovely. Put it this way, this is not a car that understands the concept of understeer.

It’s surprisingly friendly when it breaks away too, but if it was more than a quick smear on the way out of the corner, I get a sense it would take quite a bit of effort and concentration to gather back up. You’d emerge relieved, re-engage the traction control (five strengths are available) and resolve not to do it again. Other machined aluminium knobs on the centre console control the suspension, ABS and steering weight/throttle response.

But really the whole car is a way of framing that powertrain. Under the bonnet, the engine itself is easily the most beautiful thing about the car, a symphony of burnished inlet pipes and carbon ducting. Block aside the engine is completely new, redesigned from the ground up, largely by Fergus himself. It now develops 660bhp and 540lb ft, easily enough to give 1650kg of XJ-S a hefty punt in the proverbials. The Rotrex supercharger sits proudly on top. It’s centrifugal, not screw-type, so – contrary to what I suggested at the beginning, apologies – doesn’t really have the characteristic whine or deliver as much impact at the bottom end. Instead the delivery is linear – you get good torque early on, but the higher you go, the harder it hits.

Above 4000rpm the crescendo of induction, drama, vibration and side exit pipes bouncing noise off everything makes for an intense ride. The soundtrack is high-pitched and rasping along the lines of a Murcielago or Zonda, just with a little less music to the delivery. You can play tunes with it though. Response is instant and the six-speed manual Tremec gearbox has really direct, accurate, weighty shifts. Heel and toeing is a real pleasure. I find myself just gunning it up and down the gears, windows down, relishing the shift, the noise, the view out, the sense of it being unlike anything else.

Particularly an original. I’ve driven a V12 XJ-S and it’s a wafty tourer, the V12 hushed, smooth and effortless. The Supercat is a yowling, swaggering extrovert. I can’t think of another restomod that has travelled so far between what it used to be and what it is now. Truth be told though, it’s exactly the sort of Aston and Ferrari-chaser I wanted the XJ-S to be back when I was a little’un.

The money is silly. It wasn’t when the car was announced, ‘just’ £225,000 plus VAT. Cheap by restomod standards. Now it’s £395,000 plus the Reeves contribution. And a donor car. Those, at least, are still very affordable. Call it half a million once a few options have been factored in.

But what the Supercat does beyond that is lift a whole Jaguar era. For so long Jaguar’s history has been defined by one car, the E-Type. Beautiful, but gradually losing relevance and influence. The Supercat, at a pivotal time for the brand, revitalises a later era. I doubt Jaguar will see this as a positive right now, but the 1980s comeback is doing great things to classic values and this modern interpretation epitomises that decade as much as a G-series, Guards Red 911.

Approach the TWR Supercat with an ’80s mindset and you’ll have a whale of a time. Most restomods take themselves too seriously, dancing gingerly around legalities, fixated on future values and sympathetically reflecting the past without treading on corporate toes. Not this one. It’s a great big purple wallop of a car, delivered with all the subtlety of a whirling cartoon haymaker.

Photography by Mark Riccioni