You could keep your Ferrari F-40 and Lamborghini Countach and Diablo posters…for yours truly in the early 1990s, this was the supercar to dream about, and I didn’t know jack squat about it other than it’s shape. The Jaguar XJ220’s lines were unbelievably beautiful yet aerodynamic, and the front end, especially with the headlight covers shut, looked evil. The shape made me think of cars that I had seen on television as I watched LeMans racing when I was six. I wanted one badly…as did many others, when they believed that the XJ220 was supposed to be a V12 powered, four-wheel-drive supercar. Initially, that is what Jaguar did build with their 1988 concept car that was first shown at the British International Motor Show. The car proved popular with the crowd, trumping the other supercar at the show, the F-40. But when people started throwing money and blank checks at Jaguar representatives, the car, which up to that point was simply an exercise, was tapped for production. But production meant compromise, because the V12 wouldn’t meet emissions requirements and the four-wheel drive system developed by FF Developments was deemed too complicated. The XJ220 became rear-wheel drive and the V-12 was canned for the Jaguar/Tom Walkinshaw Racing JV6, a reworked version of the Austin Rover V64V V6 engine that had powered the MG Metro 6R4 Group B rally car. The DOHC, 24-valve 3.5L V6 had 540 horsepower and 475 ft/lbs of torque on tap…a great number for a V6 by today’s standards, but in 1992, that was world-class territory. Back it with a five-speed manual transaxle and prove that it could run 217 miles an hour (and faster, if you knew of a longer road than the one Jaguar used) and the company should have been able to belt it out of the park, with people dropping £50,000 deposits left and right.

But in reality, that isn’t what really happened. Jaguar didn’t produce the V12, four-wheel-drive sociopath that the public had fallen in love with in 1988, and orders were cancelled. Jaguar didn’t sell the two hundred and seventy-odd XJ220s made until 1997, and they have had a weird, slightly tainted reputation as the supercar that didn’t measure up to the promise. Didn’t matter much, though, because the people who bought them usually squirreled them away, out of the public eye. This particular example spent the better part of it’s life as a piece of art on the 37th floor of a building in Tokyo, Japan. Luckily, it was saved from automotive purgatory and is now in the hands of a guy who wants it to be the highest-mileage XJ220 on the planet. Our kind of guy! Leno has to now come to terms with his previous misgivings over the super Jaguar…does he? Click play below to find out: