Power tools

WHEN JAGUAR discovered supercharging in the early Nineties, originally for the X300-generation of XJR, it opened up a seemingly never-ending world of ever more power. This was fully realised when the V8 arrived in 1996; as the Nineties gave way to the 2000s, the bhp rose in non-incremental leaps, slowly at first but the increases became ever larger. So, while the original 4.0-litre V8 went from the 290bhp of the normally aspirated version to 370bhp of the supercharged, the later 4.2’s leapt from 300 to 390bhp.

An even larger increase occurred when the 5.0-litre variant replaced the 4.2 in 2009. By jumping from 400 to around 500bhp, it immediately transformed Jaguar’s supercharged models from fast to genuine supercars.

Of course, this generation of Jaguars weren’t the first to have so much power, with the turbocharged XJ220 from the Nineties getting there first. But while that was a low volume, niche model, the 5.0-litre supercharged V8 was available