TO SAY the company was known for its sports saloons, Jaguar by the 1980s had settled into making cars that were targeted more toward the fat cat than the cool cat. The XJ6 had become rather more golf club than squash club, and the XJ-S – while it retained some sporting image – appealed to exactly the same buyers as the E-Type had. Not the same social type, but the very same people, 20 years on and comfortably into late middle age.
But Tom Walkinshaw felt that Jaguar could regain the image it had had. Described by Jaguar’s former chair Sir John Egan in his 2015 autobiography Saving Jaguar as ”part tornado, part rugby frontrow forward and part mystical leprechaun”, Walkinshaw had been competing in the BTCC since 1974 when he won his class in a Ford-supplied Capri.
In 1981, he approached Jaguar with a proposition – he could win the European Touring Car Championship in an XJ-S if they would sponsor the project. By 1982 he took a win and the sponsorships increased – by 1984 that had become victory in the driver’s championship. Tom Walkinshaw would also help Jaguar win the World Sports Car Championship in 1987, 1988 and 1991.
But in 1984 he had
