Fast Masters was an XJ220 racing series that featured a bunch of motorsports legends battling it out on the track. I just wrote a post about it for the HP, and you can check out a video of the first race below.

 

I remember it well......
Just imagine if today you took a basic stock car and drove it?
Nascar,F1 , Indy, all the series are dead.....
A standard seat belt in those cars!
We are so lawyer poisoned today, JAGUAR SPONSORED THE RACE and CREATED IT, with no other safety features for 60+ year old guys.
Great times.
It all ended going into the 2000's, racing has collapsed since then.
Great video!
GTJOEY

 

Agreed. I love watching Le Mans and the Tudor series. But most other racing leaves me cold.

 

Ford sponsored the race , so as to reduce the numbers of left over XJ220s , and make them more value,in the future!

as most know in that era, a clanky sounding V6 turbo was the engine,, most ALL potential buyers thought they would be V12s!
(a little known info was that ROVER engine had its roots in the 1951 Buick Aluminum V8, UK/Rover bought the manufacturing rights from GM/Buick.)

so serious number disgruntaled people were upset , but lawyers fudged everthing up.

 

The XJ220 used a modified version of the Austin/Rover V64V V6 engine....which has no relationship to the Buick/Rover 215 V8. The V64V engine was developed specifically for use in the MG Metro 6R4 rally car.

The confusion lies, I think, in the development in the MG Metro 6R4 rally car itself. Before the V64V engine was developed a modified Buick/Rover V8 (reduced to a 2.5 litre V6) was used.

Cheers
DD

 

.

that makes sense, but if not for GM/Buick/ Rover, the engine may NOT have been completly different! close to 40years of redevelopment helps!

like saying a 1955 Chevy V8 is completely different from a Chevy 400 engine, almost nothing is the same but many design features are !

physical block sizes, bore centers, cylinder bank angles, rover.

and OHC vs pushrod, they did milk the old Buick till there was nothing resembling its original design.

 

We're getting into a "Grandfather's Axe" type of thing . How many changes must something go through before we begin calling it "different"? Even the V64V was re-worked a fair bit for use in the XJ220.

Cheers
DD

 

Cool Video and racing series. I never saw it before now? I remember the "IROC" international Race of Champions. What seems strange to me, I believe the XJ220 wasn't even legal in the US? but they had the racing series here??? Go Figure.

Jack

 

Bill Gates took care of making them legal as show and go vehicles at the time.
It was a fun time as Ford saved Jaguar and Aston Martin from doom.
Gave them technology and CASH , Ford should have kept Land Rover /Jag , they are a GOLD MINE now.
Land Rover is a pure gold mine. And the windows work now, haaaaaa
GTJOEY1314

 

Sorry, but the V-6 used in the XJ220 had nothing to do with the aluminum 3.5L V-8 originally developed by Buick and sold to Rover. The V-6 in the XJ220 was originally designed for Group B racing, and specifically for the Metro 6R4 race car. TWR and Jaguar bought the rights to the design, then had Mike Morton (developed the Sierra Cosworth) rework and strengthen the design. The engine has more in common with a Cosworth DFV, and nothing at all to do with the Rover V-8

 

like i said ,,40 yrs of redevelopment ,OF Course there would be nothing left of GM/Buick,, but the original idea was an aluminum V6 engine!
READ TWR and Walkinshaw getting the OK for one of HIS engines, in the 220!

coulda, woulda , shoulda been a V12 ,as original plan for XJ220!, Jag probably could never keep up the demand if it happened that way!

HEY i LOVE the car not that scary sounding engine! pic of my XJ220 ,LOL.
ron

 

I know this is an old thread, but this series actually came up in conversation at work today, and I had to come here and see if it was mentioned. Lo and behold!!!

After that first week crashfest, shown in the video in the first post, they reduced the field sizes and had single-file starts. Also, that "road course" was a joke, just a chicane at the oval's turn 1. Almost as dumb as changing the car specs when all the pre-order customers expected V12s!

I can't believe anybody thought this series was a good idea...

 

At one point Tom Walkinshaw started screaming at the Ford managers to stop the mayhem. But they kept going To be fair, by the time customers were signing contracts for this car (around Christmas 1989), and plunking down their deposits, they all knew it was a turbo V-6 with RWD and no scissor door. It is all spelled out in detail in the contracts they signed.
When the insane sports/exotic/collectible bubble of 1988-1989 came crashing down due to a recession in 1990, many customers complained that they had been misled. Jaguar took a number of customers to court and won every case. It's pretty hard to say you were a victim of bait and switch when Jaguar produces a signed contract specifying the details of the car. Too many speculators hoping to make a quick buck, then looking for an easy way out.
That same V-6 is basically a detuned Group C (XJR10, XJR11) engine, and would have been used in Group B if Group B didn't get banned for being too fast and dangerous.
Then again, McLaren planned on building 300 F1 cars during 1993-1996, and only built about 106 all in. The economy hit them hard as well. And they weren't even developing their own engine like TWR did. They just bought V-12s from BMW. And those cars are worth a fortune today.

I wonder how many of those FastMasters crashed cars were repaired and sold as "New"?

 

This "crash masters" series was a total abomination. At least the IROC series was fairly entertaining. So sad to these these unique Jaguars thoroughly trashed in a series that defied logic. Made as much sense as running US "World of Outlaws" dirt track winged sprint cars at LeMans! Totally inappropriate vehicle for the venue. What were the corporate marketing folks thinking??? I, too, wonder how many of these XJ220's were patched up and resold. Would be interesting to know the path these cars traveled once the "race" series was cancelled.

Bob G in KC

 

The marketing made no sense at all, since the cars weren't being sold in the US, so what's the point? Maybe Ford wanted to highlight its new hypercar, and enjoy the reflected glory. Or maybe they were assessing the viability of a US-legal XJ220 and wanted to see reactions from the US. After all it's last hypercar was the GT40, already nearly 30 years old by the time the XJ220 came out, and there wasn't much to brag about in the 70s and 80s.

Had they run the events at a real track like Watkins Glen or Road Atlanta or similar, and had their 3,000 lbs. of downforce at 200 mph from the diffusers actually produced any downforce at slower speeds (like when turning tight at 80mph), it might not have been a crashfest at all. That was something you will never see again. Imagine putting 20 or 30 one million dollar cars on a track today and hiring retired aces to pilot them. I'd love to see 30 Koenigseggs or Zondas in a series for prize money, where the factory gives you everything. Just arrive and drive.
I think that was the last time I'll see anything like that in my lifetime.

 

the ones that made it thru the races , today are very expensive, like 4 times the original value!
i have seen two in this USA, one in Daytona fl. and one in Alebqurque NM.
the one in NM. sold for a paltry $85000. back maybe 20yrs ago!
i heard most finally ended back in UK , being refurbed .big money not cheap!
ron

 

it is said that FORD wanted them trashed , so the ones left would become a more rare car!
like low number rare!

 

How do we even know which cars were raced in Fastmasters? They were street cars with no race conversions and had regular VINs like any other XJ220. Is there a place where the VIN numbers for the Fastmaster cars were published? If not, they were probably either crashed out or repaired and sold as street cars, or turned into C, S and N cars. Who knows?
The 6 Le Mans C cars have TWR chassis plates denoting them as C cars. I don't believe they have VINs since they are not road legal. The 5 (or 6) S homologation cars have VINs and I believe, but am not sure, a TWR chassis plate denoting them as S cars. There are a few fakes around, since Don Law can sell you all the S parts and install them on a regular XJ220. The 3 N-GT cars (1993 Italian GT, Top Run team) also have VINs and TWR chassis plates XJ220-N 001, 002 and 003. These are road legal factory race cars.
If Ford was trying to get the price of these up by making them rarer it worked, but 30 years too late for Ford

 

simple enough, Ford was losing money on every 220 they sold, so they did what would be future interests and move up to big money!
little off subject ,, Nothing in our modern world does anything thats not related to MONEY, nothing!
very old statement , Money is the ROOT of ALL EVILS, !