Rare One-of-Four Jaguar XJ220 Fails to Sell at Silverstone
It’s been nearly 30 years since production stopped — will prices for the ultra-rare Jaguar XJ220 ever take off?
When this gorgeous Jaguar XJ220 popped up on the Silverstone Auctions site, I made sure to circle back to see what it fetched when the gavel dropped. Because I’ve been keeping an eye on the prices of this legendary supercar for the last few years — and have been genuinely surprised they haven’t climbed. After all, in its heyday the XJ220 was the fastest car in the world, it looks the business, and with only around 280 examples produced, it’s pretty rare.
So are you ready to learn how much it fetched? Well, the answer is nothing. At press time, the big cat is still for sale.
This isn’t just any old XJ220 either. It’s one of only 84 right-hand drive models produced, and only one of four that were finished in Daytona Black. It’s also been maintained by the wizards at Don Law Racing, which is considered the best place on the planet to get your XJ220 serviced. Law actually worked on Tom Walkinshaw’s racing team, which brought the XJ220 to Le Mans, so he knows his stuff. In a 2017 interview with Law and his son Justin, our friends over at Petrolicious said Law’s shop is “essentially the sole reason that the XJ220 is still on the road today.”
According to the listing, this is also the very machine that famously bested a Pagani Zonda in a drag, during a race staged for Grand Tour presenter Jeremy Clarkson’s DVD Hot Metal. In my opinion, that’s some serious pedigree, so the fact that it didn’t find a new home seems like a shock. The current price is $558,468, which is hardly the kind of scratch you’ll find in the couch cushions, but given the storied history of the model — not to mention this example in particular — it still seems like a steal.
Given the rarity of the car, there isn’t a price-tracking graph over on Bring a Trailer, like the site assembles for collectible cars like the E-Type. So it’s hard to get a firm grasp on exactly what the going rate for an XJ220 is. Right now, there’s a Silverstone Green example with a Sand leather interior for sale, and — with three days left — the bidding is stuck at $350,000. Given what I’ve seen recently, I don’t expect the bidding to go all that much higher than that. Back in April, a similar example went for $426,000, and again, I thought it was undervalued.
The question now is whether we’re going to see prices ever climb. Because if they haven’t really budged three decades after Jaguar ceased production, what could happen to make them spike? Maybe a blockbuster movie that features an XJ220 as a time machine? Seriously, let me know — because I’m all out of ideas. I’m also curious about what the global pivot to electric, and eventually, self-driving cars will have on collectible prices in general… Is it possible we could see prices tank, as people who grew up driving die off? That’s obviously a long way off, but it’s definitely a possibility. Only time will tell…
Photos: Silverstone Auctions