Despite being armed only with the rear-view mirror of a Fiat Punto, I was able to see the bigger picture. On a picturesque Staffordshire B-road, what followed appeared to be part-car, part-spaceship – something from a future century, though its roots lay squarely in the one before. Styled in the late 1980s and delivered to its first customer 25 summers ago, the Jaguar XJ220 is the very definition of timeless.

We were in rural Staffordshire because the village of Hill Chorlton has become the epicentre of global XJ220 maintenance. Well known in historic motor sport circles, Don Law Racing first worked on XJ220s in 1996 and prepared a couple for competition the following year. When Jaguar’s then-owner Ford decided to close the company’s specialised JaguarSport division in 1998, Law accepted an offer to take on the XJ220 business and is now equipped to look after the 281 such cars Jaguar built. They come to him from all around the planet, some with mileages commensurate with their age and others having barely been used since delivery – if, indeed, they have been driven at all. At the time of our visit, there were more than 20 on site, not to mention half a dozen XJR-15s, a Lancia Delta S4, a BMW M1 and, obviously, an Austin A35 pick-up.

XJ220s in various stages of repair and build.