The new TWR Supercat XJS restomod was revealed to the world in late 2024 in Los Angeles – or, more specifically, in the LA warehouse of fashion designer and automotive influencer Magnus Walker.
We caught up with Magnus recently, and he explained his involvement with the TWR, which might have taken those who only know him for Porsches by surprise.
“I’ve been a Jag guy a long time,” he said. “I’ve owned all generations of E-type, Series 1, 2 and 3. I’ve owned XJSs. I’ve always been around them, and I wanted to do an XJS hot rod project back in 2018. I actually spoke to Ian Callum when he was still at Jaguar back then. He’d just done [Iron Maiden drummer] Nicko McBrain’s XJC Coupé, and he’d done his own XJC too.
“But it never went anywhere because I didn’t want to spend the money with Jaguar Classic. And then Ian left Jaguar. I ended up buying two E-types in between, a Series 2 and a Series 3 that I thought might be slightly easier to do a hot rod project on because, of course, no one really wanted to mess with an XJS. Ironically, in LA, so there’s not really many independent Jag people. So I kind of forgot about the project, just got back on with life, until around two years ago.
“Then in 2022, I get an email from Lee Newton, an English guy who had been a Porsche PR guy in North America then moved back to England. He was consulting with Fergus Walkinshaw [son of TWR founder Tom] on the rebirth of TWR. He basically said to me, ‘Hey, how do you feel about helping us with this project?’, which turned out to be the XJ Supercat.
“I basically said to him that he must be a mind reader! Fergus had been fiddling around with Jags and had a few clients who he was modifying and hot rodding Jags with. One of them, John Kane, became an investor. And, long story short, they rebooted TWR UK. So Lee, Fergus and John, who are the core of TWR, actually flew out to meet me in LA in December 2022, and we had a few talks, and that was it. We were basically off to the races.
“In January 2023 we started having weekly zoom calls, and I brought in Khyzyl Saleem to be chief designer, based in England. My Involvement is as design consultant. I visited the facility in England last year. We all hooked up at Goodwood Festival of Speed [in 2023}. So in a nutshell, it’s sort of a restomod. You place an order, deliver them a donor car. It’s not heavily optioned. Bullet points are that it’s a V12 supercharged manual, six speed, 650 horsepower, all carbon fibre body. And that’s the story of how I got involved.”
