While it is considered by many enthusiasts to be one of the
great supercars of the 90s, for
Jaguar it was little more than a highly publicised
commercial disaster. Due to a general
recession around the time it was released many of the limited run of XJ220s were sold at well below the original sticker price. Naturally this displeased earlier buyers who had paid the full amount (over £400,000).
Some additional trivia on the XJ220:
As mentioned in the previous writeup the concept that led to the XJ220 had a 4WD, V12 layout while the production model was a twin turbo V6 in RWD only. Unfortunately for Jaguar many orders had already been placed (and sizable deposits paid) by the time the final specification was decided. This led to several prospective buyers attempting to sue Jag as they felt they were paying the same money for a lesser car. As far as I know none of these were succesful.
Due to a general slump in the supercar market at the time of it's release only 281 XJ220s were actually built (of a planned 350). While many jump to defend it's status as a true 'classic' road car many of the remaining examples have been converted into track based racecars and a road-going XJ220 is a rare sight indeed.
Buy high, sell low and bury the evidence...
In September 2002 a Jaguar XJ220 was found in a secret room in the Marlborough Carpets store in Cardiff. The car was in showroom condition and had only 11 miles on the clock (some say 111 miles - either way it's bugger all). Delivered in June 1993, the limited edition supercar was bought purely as an investment for about £415,000. Evidently this wasn't the most astute purchase as almost 10 years later, this extremely rare example was auctioned off, fetching a mere £105,000.