Market Intelligence
Is all that glitters gold?
The Porsche 959 and Jaguar XJ220 were both hypercars of the late 80s and early 90s, with advanced technology and astronomical prices. The Porsche 959 sold for DM420,000 and only 292 were produced, with the last one selling for $1,050,000. The Jaguar XJ220 was priced at £361,000 with a deposit of £50,000 per order, but many buyers withdrew after the V12 engine was replaced with a V6. Only 281 out of 1,500 customers bought the car, with recent sales fetching $340,500 to €398,750.
The end of the hedonistic 80s was fertile ground for car manufacturers who wanted to try their hand at expensive technological showcases. Added to this was the surge in value of vintage cars (the famous 1989 boom), so for each new supercar car launched, sellers filled their order books in a snap. Mission accomplished?
Anyone who was a teenager in the 80s and 90s cannot have forgotten the seduction of some truly celestial models in terms of image, content and prices: the very first hypercars. Today those same teenagers must have had brilliant careers to revive memories of their childhood and put one of those objects in their garage. Let's see some of them: today we’ll talk about the Porsche 959 and the Jaguar XJ220.
First off the mark was the Porsche 959, presented at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1985. This car was full of “alien technology”: four-wheel drive, two sequential turbochargers, titanium connecting rods, magnesium wheels and electronically-controlled suspension. Imagine all that at the time when the most powerful road Porsche was the 911 Turbo which, with its 3.3-litre engine, was good for 300hp. This model, with its 2,850cc engine produced some 450hp and – listen carefully – it could exceed 310 km/h. And let's talk about the “Komfort” version because the S models developed over 500hp. The car was created to win the famous Group B class and therefore the goal was to produce at least 200, but in the end they sold 292 for the astronomical figure (at the time) of DM420,000 – the equivalent of 13 normal Porsche 911s.
