Tom Walkinshaw Racing

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Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR) was a motor racing team and engineering firm founded in 1976, in Kidlington, near Oxford, England, by touring car racer Tom Walkinshaw.

The company initially handled privateer work before entering works touring car racers for manufacturers such as Mazda and Rover. However, TWR became most closely associated with Jaguar, a relationship which started in 1982 with the successful entry of the Jaguar XJS into the European Touring Car Championship, chalking up a number of wins that year. The relationship continued and by 1988, TWR-Jaguar had taken its first Le Mans victory in a V12-powered XJR-9. Further success followed with a Le Mans win in 1990.

TWR and Jaguar formed JaguarSport initially to build tuned versions of Jaguar road-cars, culminating in the production of the XJ220 and XJR-15 sports cars at a new facility at Bloxham. With Jaguar bought by Ford in 1989, its relationship with TWR faded and by 1994, JaguarSport had been liquidated, with the Bloxham factory being overhauled for production of Aston Martin automobiles which was also at the time under Ford's ownership.

TWR had continued to achieve racing success with other manufacturers, notably winning Le Mans again in 1996 and 1997 in a Porsche-powered WSC-95. However, it was the costs resulting from the purchase of the Formula 1 team Arrows in 1996 that led to the demise of TWR in 2002.

The UK assets and facility were bought by Menard Competition Technologies. The facilities were used as Arrows Grand Prix International, Super Aguri and Caterham F1 teams headquarters.^[1] The Australian part of the business was sold to Holden.

The new TWR business has no connection with the thriving Melbourne-based Walkinshaw Group run by Tom’s eldest son, Ryan, which grew out of Walkinshaw’s Holden Special Vehicles operation. Ryan Walkinshaw has since built a business employing 1500 people that builds a wide range of specialist vehicles including models for five global OEMs.^[2]