Jaguar XJ-S E-Book

James Taylor

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

James Taylor remembers very well the disappointment among his petrol-head friends when the XJ-S was announced in 1975. It was not a replacement for the legendary E-type; its colours were uninspired; and its interior was drab. All credit, then, to those people at Jaguar who truly believed in the car and, over a period of nearly 20 years, turned the ugly duckling into a swan. From the moment the XJ-S HE arrived in 1981, there seemed to be renewed hope, and from then on, the car went from strength to strength to become the much-admired grand tourer it always should have been. The book contains a timeline of the key events in the history of the XJ-S and an overview of the evolution of the XJ-S from the XJ27 prototype. Packed with details it gives UK showroom prices through the year and sales in the US by year. Of great interest to all motoring and Jaguar enthusiasts, it is superbly illustrated with 192 colour and black & white photos. James Taylor has been writing professionally about road transport since the late 1970s, his primary interest is in those models that made the British motor industry great.

Leseprobe

JAGUAR XJ-S

The Complete Story

JAMES TAYLOR

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2019 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2019

© James Taylor 2019

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 584 8

CONTENTS

Introduction and Acknowledgements

XJ-S Timeline

CHAPTER 1 THE XJ-S PEDIGREE

CHAPTER 2 FROM XJ27 TO XJ-S

CHAPTER 3 THE 1975–1981 V12 COUPÉS

CHAPTER 4 RENAISSANCE: 1982–1991

CHAPTER 5 NEW OPENINGS: 1988–1991

CHAPTER 6 THE XJ-S SPECIALS

CHAPTER 7 MOTOR SPORT, TWR SPORT AND JAGUARSPORT

CHAPTER 8 THE FINAL YEARS: 1991–1996

CHAPTER 9 BUYING AND OWNING AN XJ-S

Appendix I XJ-S Identification

Appendix II UK Showroom Prices Through the Years

Appendix III XJ-S Sales in the USA

Index

INTRODUCTION & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I remember very well the disappointment among my enthusiast friends when the XJ-S was announced in 1975. It was not a replacement for the legendary E-type: its colours were uninspired and its interior was drab. We put it down to British Leyland Disease – and despite our general ignorance of what was really happening in the motor industry at the time, we weren’t far wrong.

All credit, then, to those people at Jaguar who believed in the car, and over a period of nearly twenty years, turned the ugly duckling into a swan. From the moment the XJ-S HE arrived in 1981, there seemed to be renewed hope, and when I was given the opportunity to drive a 1980s V12 Coupé for a magazine feature some years later, it was an experience I relished. The M4 has never seemed so much fun.

This is far from being the first book on the XJ-S, and it certainly won’t be the last. All I can hope, then, is that it adds a little something to the story that has been told before, and provides XJ-S enthusiasts with some enjoyable reading.

Special thanks go to the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust for providing both information and photographs. Several other people have helped out with illustrative material, and among them I must offer particular thanks to those photographers who have made their pictures available for use through Wikimedia Commons. They are credited individually alongside their work.

James Taylor

Oxfordshire, September 2018

XJ-S TIMELINE

1975

XJ-S goes on sale as 5.3-litre V12 Coupé.

1980

Production temporarily suspended because of poor US sales; serious consideration given to ending XJ-S production.

1981

XJ-S HE Coupé introduced, with new ‘High Efficiency’ version of V12 engine.

1982

First XJ-S victories in European Touring Car Championship.

1983

3.6-litre AJ6 engine introduced as an alternative to the V12; the XJ-S Cabriolet introduced, with 6-cylinder engine only.

1984

Jaguar company privatized.

1986

V12 Cabriolet introduced.

1988

V12 Convertible replaces V12 Cabriolet; the JaguarSport XJR-S announced.

1989

Jaguar company bought by Ford; record year for XJ-S production.

1991

Facelifted XJ-S introduced; 4.0-litre AJ6 engine replaced the 3.6-litre; sales collapse because of British recession.

1992

6-cylinder Convertible introduced.

1993

V12 engine enlarged to 6.0 litres.

1994

4.0-litre AJ16 engine replaced 4.0-litre AJ6 as the 6-cylinder option.

1996, April

Last XJ-S built.

CHAPTER ONE

THE XJ-S PEDIGREE

Today, Jaguar’s XJ-S is a much admired classic of its period, and enthusiasts admire and cherish these cars, going to great lengths to keep them in good condition and paying quite high sums of money for the best ones. But it was not always like that. The early XJ-S coupés did not meet with universal admiration on their release in 1975, and it was several years after that before the car that the market really wanted – a full convertible derivative – became available. So what had gone wrong?

A large part of the reason for the car’s poor reception in the beginning was that it was not the car that Jaguar buyers expected, nor was it the car they wanted. What they wanted was a replacement for the legendary E-type sports car, and what they got instead was a suave and sophisticated grand tourer with a quite different character. The reasons for that are explained in the next chapter, but the fact was that Jaguar did not have a history as a manufacturer of grand touring models (even though the final E-types had definitely tended that way), and its introduction of such a car caused confusion among potential buyers.

Jaguar’s traditional strengths lay in sports cars and in high-performance saloons, and it is worth reviewing the company’s history to see why the XJ-S did not fit comfortably into the established Jaguar format.

THE ORIGINS

Jaguar’s roots lay not in cars but in coachbuilding. In the early 1920s, after William Walmsley moved his small motorcycle sidecar business from Stockport to Blackpool, he met and entered into partnership with the younger William Lyons. Walmsley’s sidecars were noted for their elegant design, and the enthusiastic Lyons, who had served an apprenticeship with Crossley Motors in Manchester before joining the sales staff of a Sunbeam dealership in Blackpool, developed his eye for a good line from Walmsley’s example. In 1922 the two men formed the Swallow Sidecar Company, and this business was so successful that as early as 1927 they were able to branch out into making car bodies.

Swallow stuck to a policy of offering bodies for relatively cheap cars, in particular providing special coachwork for the little Austin Seven. This made their cars attractive to the customer who could not afford an expensive luxury car but nevertheless wanted something that stood out from the crowd of everyday models. The origins of the market positioning that would later be associated with Jaguar cars probably lay in this early experience.

Pricing was inevitably an important issue for Swallow, and by adopting quite sophisticated production processes the company was able to minimize the cost of making its bodies. When the growth of their business forced them to seek larger premises, Walmsley and Lyons therefore looked carefully at how best to use this new opportunity to minimize costs further. They concluded that a move to the Midlands was in order, as not only would it eliminate the cost of transporting chassis to Blackpool from the Midlands, but being located in the heart of the British motor industry would make it easier to recruit the skilled staff they needed. And so, in autumn 1928, the Swallow business moved lock, stock and barrel into premises at Holbrook Lane in Coventry’s Foleshill district.

The Swallow business continued to expand. Lyons introduced further new production methods, and before Christmas 1928 the rate of production had increased from twelve car bodies a week to fifty. The sidecar activities meanwhile continued. In 1929, Swallow took a stand at the Olympia Motor Show, and that year they also began to work on a wider range of chassis; most important among these for the future of the company was the Standard. In all cases, their combination of attractive lines and striking paintwork completely transformed the perpendicular look of the originals, and created cars that were genuinely different from others available in Britain.

Mechanically, however, the Swallow-bodied cars were as mundane as the standard factory coachwork their siblings carried. It was therefore only logical that Swallow should see as its next step a move into cars that were mechanically as well as bodily different from anything which could be bought elsewhere. In 1931, therefore, they took that step.

The stylish sidecar seen in this picture taken at the Coventry Transport Museum is a Swallow. The motorcycle is a 1935 Norton Model 18.WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

From sidecars to saloons… Swallow soon turned to building car bodies that were very much out of the ordinary for their times. Among the most popular was one for the Austin Seven, and an example is seen here.CHARLES/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

THE FIRST SS MODELS

The new models that Swallow announced in October 1931 were not really the company’s first complete cars, although some commentators have called them that. Content with the special bodies Swallow had been offering on their chassis since 1929, Standard had agreed to supply Swallow with their 16bhp (2-litre) and 20bhp (2.5-litre) 6-cylinder engines, fitted at the Standard works into a special chassis designed to meet Swallow’s requirements. The key to this chassis was that it was much lower than those normally used for saloons of the period, and that enabled Swallow to clothe it with rakish new sporting bodywork.

This deal with Standard had been brokered by William Lyons, and with the new cars he introduced a new name: they were to be called SS cars, a name which is generally considered to stand for Standard Swallow. Swallow now had a marque of their own. The SS1, as the 6-cylinder car was called, went on sale in 1932, and was then joined by a much smaller 1-litre model based on the Standard Little Nine chassis. This became the SS2, even though it was more in the vein of Swallow’s earlier rebodying efforts.

Once again, the next step was a logical one: in 1933 Lyons and Walmsley set up a new company called SS Cars Ltd, which absorbed the old Swallow company at the end of July 1934. From that point on, Lyons worked towards establishing the company as a credible builder of complete cars. He wanted both individual styling and the best possible road performance, and the later SS models were offered with a variety of attractive bodies, and larger and more powerful new engines provided by Standard. Keen pricing was paramount. By 1935 SS had become firmly established as a small-volume maker of stylish sporting cars costing considerably less than their exotic looks suggested.

The second-series SS1 coupé introduced for 1933 had much better balanced lines than the earlier model of the same name. Those are, of course, dummy hood irons; rear-seat passengers couldn’t see much outside the car!

WATERSHED – THE SS JAGUARS

Inevitably, Lyons pressed for more performance, and to get it he turned to the legendary tuning expert Harry Weslake and asked him to develop the big Standard engine to deliver more power. Weslake redesigned the top end of the engine with a new cylinder head and overhead valves in place of side valves, and Lyons somehow managed to persuade Standard to manufacture this revised engine exclusively for SS Cars.

Lyons’ plan was to marry up this new engine with a new chassis and a new body. He was more than capable of designing the new body himself, but there was no one at the Foleshill works who had any experience of designing chassis. So in April 1935, SS Cars took on their first proper engineer. William Heynes, who joined the company from Humber in Coventry, was later to become a central figure in the Jaguar story.

Introduced in 1936 with the Standard-derived 2.5-litre engine, the SS 100 took on the 3.5-litre engine in 1938 and was then light enough to reach 104mph (167km/h). This example was built in 1938.JLR

Lyons wanted a new name for his new car, too, and he chose to call it a Jaguar, after the World War I Armstrong-Siddeley aero engine that had caught his interest. So the new SS Jaguars went on sale for 1936. The range of sleek sports saloons and open four-seat tourers was supplemented by a new short-wheelbase two-seat sports model called the SS90 – an important model historically because it was the first proper sports car from the company. The saloons could be obtained with either a 1.5-litre or a 2.5-litre engine, the smaller one being a production Standard side-valve 4-cylinder, while the larger engine had 2664cc and the Weslake overhead-valve arrangement. The open cars, meanwhile, came only with the larger engine. Although both SS1 and SS2 models remained available alongside the newcomers, their production would soon end.

It is clear from all this that William Lyons had become the driving force within SS Cars, and so perhaps it was not surprising that William Walmsley should have chosen to leave the company towards the end of 1935. The split appears to have been amicable, and it is quite likely that Walmsley could foresee the complications and stresses of running a large company such as SS Cars was becoming, and wanted to avoid them. After he left, SS cars was floated as a public company, and thereafter was obliged to have its own board of directors who met at regular intervals. However, the board meetings of SS Cars Ltd were little more than a legal formality: in reality, Lyons grasped the helm, showing himself at times fatherly and at others autocratic as he guided Jaguar’s fortunes.

The curvaceous lines of the mid-1930s SS Jaguar saloons were easily the equal of those offered by the top-quality British coachbuilders. This example dates from 1937 and belongs to the Jaguar Heritage Collection.JLR

Major changes followed in autumn 1937 when the 1938 SS Jaguars were introduced. All-steel bodyshells replaced the traditional panelled wooden types, reducing both weight and manufacturing costs, although a wooden frame was retained for the new drophead coupé body that added to the SS marque’s upper-crust pretensions. The 1.5-litre engine, too, now had a new top end with overhead valves that gave it better performance.

Meanwhile Standard had been persuaded to build yet another development of their 6-cylinder engine as an exclusive for the SS Jaguar cars. This had a 3.5-litre swept volume, and it was available in the saloons, the drophead coupés, and in a sleek new sports tourer called the SS100. With this range of cars in production, the SS Jaguars had established a formidable reputation by the time war put an indefinite end to car manufacture in the autumn of 1939.

WARTIME

Yet it would be wrong to imagine that SS Cars had become a big volume manufacturer. By the time the Foleshill factory ceased car manufacture and focused on the production of war matériel, just 14,383 cars had been built in five seasons. It was true that production had increased enormously to meet the rising demand during 1938–1939, and that 1939 had seen a record output of 5,320 cars. It was also true that William Lyons had further expansion in mind, and in 1939 had bought Motor Panels, one of SS Cars’ suppliers of body parts. His plan was to give SS Cars the ability to manufacture their own bodies entirely in-house.

However, the expansion never took place. Like every other motor manufacturer, SS Cars was required to respond to the needs of the armed services. The Foleshill plant was turned over to manufacturing aircraft parts, took on aircraft repair work, and in 1944 designed and built some experimental lightweight air-portable miniature jeeps. The Swallow Sidecar Company, meanwhile – which still existed as an SS subsidiary – was kept busy meeting the entire requirements of the Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force for motorcycle sidecars.

This example of the 2.5-litre SS Jaguar is preserved in Australia, and makes good use of a two-colour paint scheme. The amber turn signals are, of course, a modern addition.SICNAG/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

In fact, the war proved a major setback for SS Cars, and Lyons was obliged to sell Motor Panels shortly after hostilities ended for the simple reason that SS could not afford to keep it on and expand as they had planned six years earlier. The Swallow Sidecars subsidiary was also sold off in 1945 in order to raise capital – some of which was used to buy the tooling for the 2.5-litre and 3.5-litre 6-cylinder engines from Standard, who had announced that they did not wish to resume production of special engines on behalf of SS Cars.

There was one more important change at Foleshill before car production resumed over the summer of 1945. At an Extraordinary General Meeting in March 1945, William Lyons had his company’s name changed to Jaguar Cars. It was a happy choice, but also a very necessary one, as during the war years the initials SS had become closely associated in the public mind with Nazi Germany’s combat troops, and were now clearly unsuitable for the company name.

THE LATE 1940s

The post-war British Government saw its clear priority as restoring the health of the war-damaged economy, and designed a series of austerity measures to limit consumption at home while putting a firm emphasis on foreign trade to earn revenue abroad. So the car makers were encouraged to build cars primarily for export, and the Government ensured that they would comply by rationing sheet steel and allocating it in quantity only to those companies that could show a good export performance.

For Jaguar, the need to export was an entirely new concept; although a few cars had been exported in the late 1930s, the company had been able to sell all it could produce on the home market and had therefore never gone to the trouble and expense of setting up overseas distribution networks. But now, it had to. Initially there were only right-hand-drive cars for export; the company had never built left-hand-drive cars before the war, but new and promising markets such as the USA demanded left-hand drive. So by August 1947, the first left-hand-drive Jaguars were being shipped to the USA.

As was the case with most other British car manufacturers, Jaguar’s first post-war cars were little changed from those they had been making when production had been halted six years earlier. Standard had agreed to resume supplies of the 1.5-litre engine for the time being, and so a full range of three engines was on offer. All the first bodies were saloons; drophead coupés followed in December 1947 (but only with the 6-cylinder engines), but the SS100 open tourer was never revived.

However, Lyons had plans. During the war years, he had begun to plan for a new car to replace the SS Jaguars. He wanted his new saloon to be a genuine 100mph (160km/h) car (a 1939 3.5-litre saloon was capable of about 92mph, or 148km/h), and that meant he would need a new engine. For maximum power, he wanted the twin overhead camshaft configuration then used only in racing and in a few exotic road cars. Discussions about how to achieve this took place, according to legend, while Lyons and others were on fire-watching duties at night in the Foleshill factory.

The work started in earnest during 1943, and the first experimental engines were 4-cylinder types. In due course, however, a satisfactory design was developed and Jaguar built a 6-cylinder prototype. In the form eventually adopted for production, this displaced 3442cc and put out exactly the 160bhp that had been Lyons’ design target. It took on the name of the XK type.

As he had done when introducing the overhead-valve Standard engines in 1935, Lyons chose to make this new engine the centrepiece of an all-new saloon with new chassis, suspension and body. Work on the new body design quickly demonstrated that it would need large pressings that Jaguar could not make itself now that Motor Panels had been sold on. So Lyons turned to Pressed Steel, who were happy to accept the contract but needed a year to tool up for the new saloon body.

Meanwhile, the current range of Jaguars was beginning to look dangerously dated, and so Lyons developed a two-pronged plan. First, he would develop the existing saloons further, and second, he would show off his new XK engine in a striking-looking sports car that would attract sales in the newly opening US market. Both new models would be ready in time for the London Motor Show in autumn 1948.

Like almost every other British car maker, Jaguar stumbled through the late 1940s with cars that looked very much like its pre-war offerings. This is a Mk V saloon, built in 1950 and featuring the spatted rear wheels that were briefly fashionable around the time.WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The XK120 sports model was a revelation in 1948, with hugely attractive lines and the latest twin-cam 3.4-litre 6-cylinder engine. Demand was such that Jaguar had to abandon its initial plan for low-volume hand-built cars, and tool up for volume production. This is the fixed-head coupé version.WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

For the new saloons, a stiffened chassis and new independent front suspension were combined with a new and more modern-looking body. Focusing on performance, Lyons made it available only with the two 6-cylinder engines. He also gave it a new name on its introduction in autumn 1948: this was the Jaguar Mk V, and it came as either a saloon or a drophead coupé. Most examples were exported, in line with the Government requirements of the day, but it bought Lyons the time he needed to get his planned 100mph (160km/h) saloon into production. Meanwhile, the new sports car would hold the fort by demonstrating Jaguar’s commitment to high performance.

Based on a shortened version of the new Mk V saloon chassis and introduced at the same 1948 Motor Show, the new Jaguar XK120 sports car was not designed for volume production. Like the Land Rover (announced earlier that year), it was not intended for long-term production. In fact, Lyons had arranged for its sleek and streamlined two-seat body to be built on a wooden frame with hand-made aluminium panels, and it was only when the car became a runaway success that he had the body redesigned as an all-steel structure for volume manufacture.

The XK120 was, of course, the showcase for the new 3.4-litre 6-cylinder XK engine. In the light sports-car body, this gave extraordinary performance for the time, and the car quickly became a major export success. By the time it was succeeded by the better developed but generally similar XK140 in 1954, more than 12,000 examples had been built – huge numbers by Jaguar’s standards.

THE 100MPH SALOON

The new 100mph saloon was announced at the 1950 London Motor Show. Its flowing lines – Lyons’ work, of course – echoed those of the XK120, while the 3.4-litre XK engine offered a top speed of more than 100mph (160km/h). And somehow, Jaguar had managed to keep the basic price below £1,000 – above this figure cars attracted a higher rate of Purchase Tax. Jaguar had called it the Mk VII, deliberately skipping a number after the Mk V because the then-current Bentley saloon was known as the Mk VI.

Sadly for British car buyers, the Mk VII was intended initially for export only, and in the USA it was received with huge enthusiasm. Within three days of its appearance at the New York show, Jaguar took orders for no fewer than 500 cars in the USA. Following the success of the XK120 sports car, Jaguar had now definitively broken into the Transatlantic market, which would soon become their largest single source of income.

The XK120 made a name for itself in rallies as well, and Ian Appleyard made a name for himself driving this one. NUB 120 is today preserved by the Jaguar Heritage Trust.JLR

XK Jaguars are still highly sought after as historic racers and for road runs; this one was pictured in Switzerland at a classic car event.JLR

The Jaguar Heritage Trust owns this 1953 XK120 – and uses it in anger in many events.JLR

Demand for the Mk VII and the XK120 built up so quickly that by 1951 Jaguar’s Foleshill premises were bursting at the seams. However, they were very fortunate that year to be able to purchase a redundant Daimler plant at Browns Lane, near Coventry, and to move their entire manufacturing operation there. It was a good thing they did, for demand would continue to expand, led by the US market.

From now on, US tastes would increasingly influence the development of Jaguar’s cars, and from 1953 there was an optional automatic gearbox for the Mk VII saloon. Next came an overdrive, as witness to the car’s popularity on the European continent where the new high-speed motorways in Belgium, Germany and Italy allowed its use to the full. A substantially revised Mk VIIM arrived in autumn 1954, with more engine power, new bumpers, and a host of minor but valuable improvements. At the same time, XK140 replaced XK120 as the sports model, and by now Jaguar’s annual production totals were regularly hovering around the 10,000 mark; before the introduction of the Mk VII and the XK120, they had usually been a little over 4,000.

William Lyons – Sir William by the time this picture was taken – steered his company to success through a mixture of benign paternalism and hard-nosed autocracy.

The really new post-war Jaguar arrived in 1950 as the Mk VII, and evolved over the years through Mk VIIM and Mk VIII into the Mk IX. This is a Mk VIII, which introduced stylish two-colour paintwork and a one-piece curved windscreen in 1956.CHARLES/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The retrospectively named Mk 1 compact Jaguar arrived in 1955, with the company’s first monocoque shell and a 2.4-litre version of the XK engine. Wheel spats were still considered fashionable, although not for much longer.

In 1959, the compact saloons became Mk 2 types, with multiple improvements, both mechanical and cosmetic. With chrome wire wheels and the 3.8-litre engine, this 1967 car is one of the more desirable examples of the breed.

This improvement in Jaguar’s fortunes had far-reaching effects, and without it the company would not have been able to finance the design, development and introduction of a new range of saloon cars which increased the number of its basic product ranges to three. Those cars were the compact Jaguars, and they entered production in 1955. They pioneered monocoque construction at Browns Lane, and although initially powered by a short-stroke version of the XK engine with only 2.4 litres that promised not much more than 100mph (160km/h) with a following wind, they would soon be further developed. From 1957, a variant with the 3.4-litre XK engine was introduced, and with it came disc brakes to ensure adequate stopping ability. Then from 1959 the cars were extensively revised cosmetically (becoming what is still universally known as the Mk 2 range) and also gained a new top option in the shape of the latest 3.8-litre XK engine, a big-bore derivative of the 3.4-litre type.

For the Mk X saloon of 1961, Lyons went for the long, low and wide proportions that he believed would help sales in the USA. This was his own example of the type, pictured outside his home at Wappenbury Hall.SILVERSTONE AUCTIONS

This had first been seen a year earlier in the XK150 sports models that replaced the XK140s and in the big Mk IX saloons. With 220bhp (calculated by SAE gross standards), it turned the 3.8-litre Mk 2 saloon into a ‘giant killer’. The cars had spectacular success in circuit racing in the early 1960s, and established the formula for the high-performance compact saloon that has since been followed by many other makers – notably by the hugely successful BMW.

Sales successes with the XK sports cars, the compact saloons, and the big Mk VII to Mk IX saloons made the late 1950s a time of expansion for Jaguar – but the company was denied permission to build a new factory in the Coventry area. The government of the time had a policy of diverting major new factories away from prosperous areas and into depressed areas of the country where there was an unemployment problem. So Jaguar tackled its requirements in another way, by purchasing the ailing Daimler business (for £3.4 million) from its BSA Group owners. With that purchase came the Daimler factory at Radford – exactly what Jaguar wanted. As for the existing Daimler cars, they were allowed to wither on the vine over the next few years and were replaced by a series of Daimler-badged Jaguars.

Jaguar saloons were now considered luxurious as well as fast and good-looking. This is the interior of the Lyons Mk X.SILVERST ONE AUCTIONS

ENTER THE E-TYPE

There was one more new saloon in the Jaguar range before the company introduced the legendary E-type, and that was the Mk X that arrived in 1961. This replacement for the Mk IX was a great whale of a car – one of Jaguar’s rare miscalculations – that was designed largely to appeal in the important US market, where cars of its size were the norm. Initially released with the 3.8-litre engine, its real importance was to pioneer a new and complex independent rear suspension that would serve Jaguar for the next quarter of a century.