We can't believe Jaguar didn't build the XK180

One of the best-looking Jags of modern times, we reckon. And that’s most odd, considering the cars Jaguar were actually selling in the late Nineties and early Noughties (the XK180 was revealed at the Paris Motor Show in 1998) included the quite awful S-Type.

Keith Helfet is the man responsible for the way the XK180 looks. He worked on the XJ220, too, and as much is obvious when you look at the two side-by-side. Aluminium panels (hand-formed by the same company that did them for C- and D-Types in the Fifties) clothe modified XKR underpinnings.

This one did. It had the XKR’s supercharged 4.0-litre V8, here with 450bhp (80 more than standard) and 445lb ft, and a five-speed automatic gearbox specially modified to work with buttons on the steering wheel. Special 20in alloys covered Brembo brakes and uprated suspension. It was a proper thing, not some show car made from polystyrene, balsawood and Blu-Tack. 

180mph top-end seems like a reasonable assumption. Plenty, when you don’t even have a temporary roof to hide under. In truth we don’t know exactly how fast it was, but as the 180 was more powerful, physically shorter (over a foot) and probably lighter than the already quite fast XKR, it certainly wouldn’t have been slow.

To celebrate 50 years of Jag XKs, the first of which was unveiled in 1948. It drew inspiration from the C- and D-Type, and was built by Jag’s Special Vehicle Operations division (different from today’s SVO) in Coventry. Difference is, the XK120 saw light of day. The 180 never would.

Well it built two – one RHD, one LHD, both roofless. As for production, it was never going to happen. The official party line is that it didn’t make financial sense. Period stories note that Jag was still trying to sell XJ220s at a fraction of their initial RRP, and that no amount of man maths would convince Ford (Jag’s then owner) to loosen the purse strings for the XK180 – gorgeous as it was, and as universally positive as its reception may have been.