Bridgestone Making Sure Jaguar XJ220 Stays on the Road
Jaguar’s iconic XJ220 supercar gets new life through Bridgestone.
Specialty parts makers and Jaguar have been the source that most XJ220 owners contact for their maintenance needs. However, stock of one particular consumable has run dry: tires. Bridgestone had originally worked with speed aces like Andy Wallace and chief test driver Andrea Dauri. Those two, among many more from the original development team, got together with Bridgestone to start from scratch and develop a new tire.
Bridgestone was responsible for the contact patches on the original car. But advances in technology and missing details about the original tire dictated a new approach. Speed isn’t much of an issue anymore, with tires handling huge velocities, but wet handling and noise are things you expect from a tire now.
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As you’d expect, hours upon hours of research and development went into the XJ220’s new tire, and using chassis #004 as a base, they were using Jaguar’s original tire development car. Before we spoil some of the details of their development process, we want to direct you to the video above. It covers an incredible amount of detail about the history of Bridgestone’s original tire for the XJ220, and the process of making the new tire.
