Racing team owner Tom Walkinshaw approached Jaguar executives and encouraged the company to enter the XJS into the 1981 European Touring Car Championship. A total of just 275 cars were produced by the time production ended, each with a retail price of £470,000 in 1992, making it one of the most expensive cars at that time. The changes to the specification and a collapse in the demand of high performance cars brought about by the early 1990s recession resulted in many buyers choosing not to exercise their purchase options. Įngineering and emissions requirements resulted in significant changes to the specification of the XJ220, most notably the replacement of the Jaguar V12 engine by a turbocharged V6 engine. Approximately 1,500 deposits of £50,000 each were taken and deliveries were planned for 1992. Its positive reception prompted Jaguar to put the car into production. The initial XJ220 concept car was unveiled to the public at the 1988 British International Motor Show, held in Birmingham, England. The XJ220 made use of engineering work undertaken for Jaguar's then current racing car family. The group wished to create a modern version of the successful Jaguar 24 Hours of Le Mans racing cars of the 1950s and 1960s that could be entered into FIA Group B competitions. The XJ220 was developed from a V12-engined 4-wheel drive concept car designed by an informal group of Jaguar employees working in their spare time. According to Jaguar, an XJ220 prototype managed a Nürburgring lap time of 7:46.36 in 1991 which was faster than any production car lap time before it. This made it the fastest production car from 1992 to 1993. The XJ220 recorded a top speed of 212.3 mph (341.7 km/h) during testing by Jaguar at the Nardo test track in Italy. The Jaguar XJ220 is a two-seat sports car produced by British luxury car manufacturer Jaguar from 1992 until 1994, in collaboration with the specialist automotive and race engineering company Tom Walkinshaw Racing. There's a class, and a vehicle, for everyone, and all of those vehicles can be found in the drag racing classifieds.2,009 mm (79.1 in) (excluding wing mirrors) But there are also whole series’ of street and stock-performance vehicles including Pro Street, Pro Stock, Sportsman and bracket, stock and super stock. Organizations like the NHRA, the PDRA (Professional Drag Racers Association), and the IHRA (International Hot Rod Association) serve as sanctioning bodies that create the rules for classes of racing, and govern the types of racing and series that amateur and professional racers participate in to ensure safety measures and standards of conduct.ĭrag Racing appeals to both drivers who want to challenge the powertrain in a daily driver, and those who want to build and race custom vehicles that only thrive by the light of the strip.ĭrag Racing encompasses many types of amateur and professional specialty racing vehicles including door cars, funny cars, motorcycles, dragsters, and pro modifieds. Now, drag racing is a professional sport, with classes covering everything from junior dragsters, to motorcycles, to vintage vehicles, to nitro-powered vehicles. Hot rodders would race each other on long empty strips of road. Professional organizations like the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) the largest sanctioning body in professional drag racing, were started to counteract illegal street racing, which can be very dangerous due to the speed and power of the vehicles and the magnitude of damage that occurs when something goes wrong and these vehicles malfunction or crash.ĭrag Racing really got its start as a contest in the 1950s with the rise in popularity of hot rods – vehicles with classic bodies ( 1932 Fords, etc) which were modified with modern engines and tuning to create more power and run faster. While most drag racing now takes place on a professional race track, there are both televised staged street contests and illegal street races which still take place. Drag Racing is a contest between two vehicles to determine which can go the fastest from a standing start to full open throttle over an agreed upon distance, which is usually an 1/8 mile, ¼ mile or 1000 feet.
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