The TWR Supercat Is The 600+ Horsepower Manual V12 Jaguar XJS Restomod We Always Wanted

Modern regulations make it hard to develop a brand new car with an old-school mentality, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take the things we know and drastically improve them. Starting with the controversial Jaguar XJS coupe, two years of hard work have culminated in this, the TWR Supercat. It’s a fully worked-over rocket for the road, and it should enter customer hands sooner than you might expect.

TWR, which stands for Tom Walkinshaw Racing, was an absolute motorsports legend. Although the firm started out racing Mazda RX-7s and took on a variety of work from the Nissan R390 to the Holden VN Commodore SS Group A SV race car, it’s linked most strongly with Jaguar. From Jaguar XJS touring cars to the wild XJR-9 Group C car to having a hand in the Jaguar XJ220, TWR built some legendary cats. However, after Ford bought Jaguar in 1994, things went a bit sideways. TWR diversified, but it wasn’t sustainable for good, and the firm folded in 2002. However, TWR is now back, with Tom’s son Fergus running the show.

To style the Supercat, TWR tapped Khyzyl Saleem, the same guy who designed Travis Pastrana’s Airslayer gymkhana Subaru wagon, the modified Polestar 1 cover car from “Need For Speed: Heat“, and body kits for multiple SEMA cars, as lead designer. The firm also brought on Magnus Walker as a consultant, famed for his litany of Outlaw Porsches. The result is a seriously aggressive carbon fiber body that underwent extensive computational fluid dynamics testing before the first molds were made to ensure baseline aerodynamic efficacy. The result looks like a touring car for the road.

TWR Supercat

From seriously pumped fenders to side-exit exhausts, the TWR Supercat looks the absolute business. Up front, you’ll find a partially shaved nose, a bulging, vented hood, and an air dam deeper than Lake Superior. Out back, you’ll spot a diffuser large enough to house a family of five, a subtle roof spoiler, and a ducktail that picks up off the flared rear fenders. The Supercat even punches out the Jaguar XJS’ buttressed C-pillars to let air pass clean through them, and rolls on a wicked set of turbofan wheels.

Twrshot 2 Final Copy

Under the hood sits a V12 that’s been supercharged to north of 600 horsepower, and it’s hitched to a proper manual gearbox. While TWR isn’t going into any further powertrain details yet, that’s enough to know that the Supercat will have some serious shove. Obviously, that much power requires some serious suspension work to harness it, so TWR’s been both in the lab and on the test track taming the beast. The firm claims the Supercat has been through a full regimen of aerodynamic, performance, and durability testing, which supports a relatively short timeline to production.

Twr Supercat Front Three Quarters Copy

The first TWR Supercat examples will roll down the line in the fourth quarter of this year, and prices start at £225,000 before taxes, or about $281,820 at current exchange rates. That’s not cheap, but actually, it’s not a bad deal either. When a Singer-modified Porsche costs a million dollars, and a Bentley Continental GT S starts at $277,150, spending that sort of money on a thoroughly reimagined Jaguar is both imaginative and borderline sensible. Plus, with a production run of just 88 cars to honor the TWR Jaguar XJR-9’s 1988 24 Hours of Le Mans victory, you know the Supercat is going to be rare.

Twrshot 4 Final Copy

Should you wish to see this wild reinterpretation of a Jaguar XJS in person, TWR has announced what it calls “a full dynamic debut in Summer 2024.” I’m not a betting man, but there’s a good chance that may happen at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Either way, we can’t wait to hear this beast roar.

(Photo credits: TWR)

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