British automaker Jaguar was founded in September 1922, making this its centenary year. With global conflicts, economic meltdowns, and pandemics a mainstay of the last century, that’s quite impressive. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet heard of anything special being planned to celebrate this milestone, although the luxury manufacturer did recently reveal a concept that will only ever be driven in the virtual world of gaming. We can only imagine that Jaguar will start teasing something exciting closer to September – after all, this is a brand that has been around longer than Ferrari, dammit – but we have a feeling that there will be other causes for celebration among fans of the brand that brought us the achingly gorgeous E-Type.

CarBuzz has exclusively discovered trademarks filed with the European Union Intellectual Property Office and the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office for the phrase “Edition 1988,” and if you know your Jag history, there are a couple of reasons that this is very exciting news.

In 1985, Jaguar returned to topflight sports car racing after being absent for almost 30 years. Four years of experimentation and evolution saw the XJR-9 finally take victory at Le Mans in 1988, snatching the title from Porsche. The British automaker arrived that year with five cars, but apart from another Jag in fourth, Porsche filled the rest of the top ten while two Jags failed to finish and the third came home in 16th position. Interestingly, a Porsche 962C almost won, and, were it not for the driver making the rare error of running out of fuel, the Jaguar chassis that had failed to even finish at its last four Le Mans outings would not have claimed a triumph in ’88. As fortuitous as racing sometimes is, the fact is that Jaguar had a great package that could have won in earlier campaigns, so when the team finally achieved victory with drivers Jan Lammers, Johnny Dumfries, and Andy Wallace, it was validation of the British company’s abilities.

That’s why our first guess is that a Jaguar F-Type Edition 1988 referencing Le Mans is what the brand is planning.