I’ve seen some weird stuff on Facebook Marketplace before. One guy in my area sells fish he caught. Another sells fully-built chicken coops. I’ve even seen people unload the sorts of used clothing that should not be sold secondhand. But this one listing stood out as odd, both for its rarity and its price: a 1990 Jaguar XJR-15. But not just any Jaguar XJR-15—one that actually won a race in Monaco. Price? Just $1,750,000.
Let’s start with the choice to put this thing on Facebook Marketplace. Surely, such a prestigious, expensive race car should be auctioned off at a high-end, monocle-infested rich-guy auction. Instead, I’m looking at the listing for a nearly $2 million race car next to ads for a broken Land Rover Discovery II and some seasoned firewood. Although, Marketplace might be a fitting spot for this, since the car’s pretty odd itself.
In the late 1980s, Tom Walkinshaw, owner of Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR), hatched an idea to build a road-going version of the Le Mans-winning Jaguar XJR-9 prototype. So Walkinshaw hired Peter Stevens, the British designer who also helped design the 1989 Lotus Elan and McLaren F1. The project started in 1989 and the XJR-15 was sold to a select few very wealthy clients—including the Sultan of Brunei—in 1991. It wasn’t an official Jaguar, but it was built by Jaguar Sport, a joint venture between Jaguar Cars and TWR, and a subsidiary of TWR.
Here’s where things get even more interesting. Sixteen XJR-15s were built to specifically race in the 1991 Jaguar Sport Intercontinental Challenge, a three-round Formula 1 support series specifically planned for this supercar. The three races were at Monaco, Silverstone, and Spa-Francorchamps, and the winner of the final race would take home a cool $1 million. The cost of the car? $1 million! And since many owners hired professional racers to drive their cars, it seemed that they entered in an attempt to recoup money spent. (Amusing detail about that last race at Spa: organizers kept the total number of laps a secret from participants, to discourage any funny business over that big cash prize.)
This specific car for sale is the one that won the first event in Monaco, with British driver Derek Warwick behind the wheel. It’s also the only one said to have a 7.0-liter engine, while the others used a 6.0-liter Jaguar V12. Customers had the choice of either a six-speed unsynchronized manual or a five-speed synchronized manual. Most cars made 450 horsepower, but it’s unclear how much power this 7.0-liter car makes. Either way, it sounds damn good.
If you have $1,750,000 to spend—a big price increase from the XJR-15 that sold at Amelia Island last year—on a collector car or personal track toy, reach out to this seller on Facebook Marketplace in the appropriate manner: “Is this still available? It run good? You take Venmo?”
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