The TWR Supercat Is A Wild 600bhp V12 Jaguar XJS Restomod

The XJS has long been a bit of an outlier amongst Jaguars, sandwiched between the timeless E-Type and elegant XK in the firm’s lineage of two-door sports cars and long saddled with a bit of a bad reputation for bad reliability and poor build quality.

This project is setting out to change that. It’s the TWR Supercat and is the first product of TWR Performance, a rebirth of the Tom Walkinshaw Racing outfit. The original TWR was best known for its Jaguar motorsport exploits, initially race-preparing XJSs and later building Jag’s Group C cars, including the 1988 Le Mans-winning XJR-9. It also built the XJ220 and XJR-15 road cars.

The reborn TWR has been founded by Tom Walkinshaw’s son, Fergus, and his business partner John Kane, and the Supercat is quite the statement of intent for the firm going forward. Based on an XJS donor car, it gets a supercharged V12 kicking out more than 600bhp. How closely related this is to the base XJS’s 5.3-litre (later 6.0-litre) V12 isn’t clear, but given that car never made more than 304bhp, we have to assume the modifications are extensive.

Reflecting TWR’s desire to create raw, analogue cars, the Supercat exclusively gets a manual gearbox, and the entire body is made from carbon fibre. The aggressive new widebody look is a collaboration between two big players in the custom car scene: Magnus Walker, who’s best known as the figurehead of the ‘outlaw’ Porsche movement; and Khyzyl Saleem, a designer known for his wild custom car renderings and who used to work on the Need For Speed games.

We’ll get a look at a ‘fundamentally re-imagined’ interior when the real car makes its dynamic debut in summer, but order books are already open. Each car has a baseline price of £225,000, which we have to assume doesn’t include a donor XJS, and just 88 will be built in a nod to the year of TWR and Jaguar’s Le Mans victory.