Handle with care

Apart, perhaps, from the XJR-15. Because Tom Walkinshaw didn’t go to the ruinous cost of designing it from scratch, instead basing it on something he already had, the aforementioned XJR-9. He never intended to make it in sufficient quantities for global type approval to be needed and he already had a plan for it to make money: he’d hold a three-round race series on the same programme as Formula 1, with a $1m, winner takes all prize. A total of 53 were built, of which 18 were race cars. The price? A cool £500,000, or about £1.2m in modern money.

It may not look anything like an XJR-9, but they share essentially the same carbon fibre tub and suspension systems. The engine displaces a mere 6-litres rather than 7-litres but it is the same 24-valve Jaguar V12 used by the XJR-9. The racing XJR-15s have a six-speed Hewland gearbox originally designed for the Group C cars but never used.

The biggest difference between them you can see. While the Group C car was designed as an inverted wing, with full ground effect bodywork for bone-crunching quantities of downforce, the beautiful body Peter Stevens penned for the XJR-15 had none whatsoever. Even if its rear diffuser were capable of sucking the car onto the deck, the car’s ride height sets it so high above the ground it must be all but useless.

I did try to drive one, years ago, but it was a street car with padded seats and there was so little room inside I was unable even to get in, let alone operate it safely. But a race car? That would be different, particularly if those fine fellows from Bell Sport & Classic, who are selling it on behalf of its owner, took the seat out for me and then padded out the bare tub with foam. Instantly I am as comfortable as can be.

Albeit still rather afraid, not least because of one other factor with which no one who ever raced them had to contend. As you can see from its number plate, this may be a racing XJR-15 – and, indeed, it is the first production chassis – but it is registered for the road, and the significance of that? Street tyres on a car designed to run on slicks. They’re massive and have never been used before, but I still can’t help thinking of Usain Bolt getting ready for the men’s 100 metres Olympic final wearing hobnail boots.

Time to bust a few myths and right some of the wrongs that have been written about this car over the years. The biggest misnomer is that the road and racing versions were essentially the same car, the former simply trimmed and kitted out with air conditioning. It’s nonsense. They have completely different gearboxes, and dramatically different tunes for both their engines and suspension. They have different steering racks, different gear ratios and, perhaps most significantly of all, the racers weigh 200kg less than the road cars at just 1050kg. The official power figure quoted is 450bhp, but with different camshafts, valve and ignition timing and far more aggressive engine mapping, the race car has to be more powerful than that.

The cockpit is very simple: there are analogue dials including, curiously for a racing car, a speedometer and a bank of switches on the right, all of which have to be flicked before the V12 will fire up. When it does, every head in the Donington Park pit lane turns in its direction. It sounds fearsome, but not evil. I’ve driven cars powered by short-stroke Cosworth DFV F1 engines that barely work below 8000rpm and rip your head off above it, but this is not going to be like that. Is it?

The Hewland racing dog ’box is lovely – far nicer than the March-built five-speed transmission used in the Le Mans Jaguars – and clunks satisfyingly into first. The clutch is heavy but ever so gentle and the big motor warbles the car away from rest with all the manners of an XJ12 limousine.

First impressions count, usually. And these ones were uniformly, perhaps unexpectedly good. The motor is awash with torque, so much so that were the gearbox tricky, you’d just decide to be a gear up everywhere, not shift too often and let the engine take the strain. You’d be a little slower I’m sure, but not much. The steering is very quick, which surprised me a bit until I was told it had a much faster rack than the road car, but full of feel. The brakes felt excellent too, and the pedals perfectly shaped for the heel and toe downshifts that are as essential in this car as turning the wheel when you get to a corner.

With all the dials on an engine newly rebuilt by Don Law pointing in the right direction, I waited for the back straight and let it do its thing. Wow. It’s not so much the sheer speed – though a simple power-to-weight calculation shows you it’s massively fast – but the sense of occasion that goes with it. Nor is it that the V12 snarls, howls, screams and shrieks, but that it does these things all at the same time while thrusting you forward. Changing up just the other side of 6000rpm seems about right as you sit there, sealed in this chamber full of the most wondrous sounds, chucking gear after gear at it, just to see how long you can make it last.

It would be so easy to forget you were on road tyres and brake as if you were on hot slicks. And that would be the end of one of fewer than 10 XJR-15s still in race configuration and not converted to full road car spec. So I don’t do that. Coming down the ’box is barely any harder than going up and I remain in my own happy little XJR-15 cocoon until I arrive at the chicane. Then wake up very quickly.

The nose turns into the apex as expected but then keeps turning. For the first time I feel this enormous mass in the back of the car trying to influence its direction of travel. It’s not a problem, but I’m still not trying very hard.

It’s there again as I turn into Redgate, this time at a far higher speed. There’s more roll than I expected and that sense of an engine growing restless on its mounts grows further. ‘The problem,’ Tiff told me, ‘is you’ve got a car with a really high centre of gravity and no downforce.’ To which I would add what feel like soft springs for a race car of this potential and, in my case, those road tyres. Tiff said that even on slicks the car slid around so much your tyres could be shot in as little as three laps.

But I have little choice but to press on. I try to get used to the way it corners, managing the roll-induced yaw on turn in, and learn to be very conservative with my entry speeds and buy back some of the lost time by getting back on the power quite early. With the weight transferred rearward thus, it feels a lot more stable and if not exactly reassuring, then certainly manageable.

I do a few more laps like this, gaining a little confidence each time around until, turning from right to left while entering the super-quick Craner Curves, it does a really big lurch. I had time to wonder just how much trouble I might be in, but was straight again before the answer came. In this instance it was ‘not much’. But it could have been.

I’ve been so lucky for so long to have track tested as many cars as I have and each leaves a little mark on me, a reason to never forget it. And in this case the XJR-15 counts as the car I’ve been most pleased to get out of and give back to its owner. I like a challenging car, particularly on a quiet, safe race track like this, but you always have to be comfortable you’re on the right side of the risk to reward ratio. In the XJR-15, I was never close.

Even so, while this might matter to me and while I hope it is interesting to you, the bigger question is whether any of it actually makes a difference. Yes its handling is deeply disconcerting, a trait probably exacerbated by its road tyres, but how much is that offset by its beauty, its rarity, its fabulous powertrain and the fact that it shares its DNA with a Le Mans-winning Group C car?

As this car is chassis one and it wears a number plate, this actual machine has a claim to being the first ever carbon fibre road car. Cars fascinate for more than one reason, and with this one the fascination comes far more from what it is than what it might be like to drive. And even if that means I was very happy to hand the car back, that doesn’t make me feel anything less than fortunate and delighted to have made its acquaintance.

Our thanks to the XJR-15’s owner, Bell Sport & Classic (www.bellsportandclassic.co.uk) where the car is now for sale, and Donington Park Circuit for all their help making this feature possible

Photography by Jayson Fong