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A race car for the road (Jaguar XJR 15)




Jaguar XJR 15 








This particular Jaguar series depicts or displays what would happen when you take the most admirable and perfect in every angle car, then add a massive V12, what you end up with is one of the best sports cars. The XJR 15 was designed by Peter Stevens the same man who later on worked with McLaren and was the main designer for the McLaren F1. Remember this car was produced at the same time as Lamborghini Countach a car that looked stunning and fancy, but fast-forward to 2018 and compare the two designs. The Lamborghini Countach in my opinion looks like it has too much going on, whereas the XJR 15 looks just as elegant as it looked 25 years ago even now.

XJR 15 race series


The XJR 15 is based on the Le Mans winning XJR 9 and only 53 were built. The entire car consists of carbon fibre the XJR 15 was never an in-house design and idea from jaguar it was a tie up with TWR racing hence it was called Jaguar sports. If the XJR 15 felt a bit under powered TWR produced a limited number of XJR 15 LM that had a 7.4L V12, which produced 700hp. This is a mad amount of power considering the fact that the car weighed just 1,062 kilograms. The car came a five speed synchromesh transmission as an option, and a 6 speed unsynchronized transmission as standard, this just proved how serious of a race car this was. The car was based on the XJR 9 and the regular XJR 15 had a 6.0L V12. Coming back to the LM variants, there is not much information about the LM and only five cars were produced.              
XJR 9



For handling the car was using a fully independent suspension setup, with non-adjustable Bilstein shock absorbers all round. At the time the car featured brakes that were one of the most powerful they were steel disc brakes with AP four pot callipers. The XJR 15 could reach speeds of 191 mph (307kph) but with longer gear ratios the car could reach speeds of 224mph but it was never tested.





Even though the car was based on the XJR 9 it was still focused towards being a road-going-racer or a race car for the road, but it still was never meant to be a daily driver. The suspension setup never allowed the car to reach or take advantage of its full aero dynamic capability. For the XJR 15 to be more successful or memorable some say it could have had more power, some say it needed some more work on the aero dynamics. For me the XJR 15 is a car that later on lead to the McLaren F1 if you look at it from the design perspective. The car definitely well balanced and defined what a perfect sports car should be but was overshadowed by the McLaren F1, I know it came out much later but it received so much attention for its track capabilities that other cars were forgotten for a long time. This was my knowledge and opinion on the XJR 15.           










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Comments

  1. Unknown6 March 2018 at 05:57

    Quite impressive that you have so much knowledge about these stuff. You should advertise this to the right audience. I think in this blog’s case, all your car lover friends right from aged 10 and above. They would enjoy this a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6 March 2018 at 06:02

    It’s quite impressive that you know a lot about cars. I think your article will get more view if you target the right audience. In this case, your friends from the school who love cars, right from 10yrs old boys and above. Good job. Keep writing:)

    😊😊👍🏻👍🏻
    Mr. Pratik Siddharth Thapa

    ReplyDelete
  3. pjr14 March 2018 at 02:03

    Informative as usual. I was not aware that XJR lead to McLaren's. With the new management in place, these cars should be again brought back to life.

    Some thoughts - 700 bhp is insane power. Weight, just 1000 odd kgs amazing, I am surprised the car doesn't fly off at high speed.

    ReplyDelete

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