Jaguar/Daimler:An Appreciation: An Appreciation of Production Models, 1960-70

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It also represented an advance in detail refinements now that Jaguar, for the first time, took complaints about its slithery armchair seats, feeble heating and ventilation systems seriously. A better-looking successor using 3.2- or 4-litre twin-cam ‘sixes’, voted ‘most beautiful car in the world’ by a panel of Italian style gurus. The XJR was the first to use Eaton’s M90 supercharger, meaning 0-60mph in 5.5 secs. For the 1997 XJ8 (X308), V8s replaced ‘sixes’ and V12s. The XJR 4-litre was then the most powerful Jaguar roadcar engine, boasting a supercharged 370bhp – with a rare Daimler variant called the Super V8. Revisit any of the three XJ series today and you will be surprised by how genuinely low-slung they are, particularly in a motoring environment where everyone wants to sit sky-high in their SUVs.

You still have to swap between the 11-gallon pannier tanks in the rear wings, using a switch on the dashboard, but the HE (High Efficiency) V12s, featuring Michael May’s swirl-action combustion chambers, made 20mpg a realistic possibility for the first time.The long-wheelbase 4.2 was far and away the most popular, at 57,804 cars out of a total of 127,000 SIIs (all engines and bodies). Short- and long-wheelbase versions at first, after which the SWB was reserved for the XJC coupés with 4in-longer doors. All four-door V12s were LWB, but still on carbs until the 285bhp/147mph injected 1975 car, badged XJ 5.3. ‘Blazer button’ steel wheels with hubcaps or GKN alloys on SII. Greatest oddity of the SII was the 170 exportonly 2.8s, but the 1975 3.4, with cloth seats and other luxury items deleted, is much preferred.

Heynes’ original idea for the XJ project in the early ’60s was to create a four-door, four-seat E-type, a low-slung sports saloon that would take the fight to the Europeans in the ’70s and recapture the interest of an American market that still loved its XKEs but never quite took the MkX or S-type to its heart in the same way.

This laid to rest the XJ40 geneology with an allnew aluminium monocoque, bonded rather than welded for huge weight savings and gains in strength. There were petrol V6s and V8s, plus a diesel V6. The supercharged V8s give the most thrills, but complex technology and electronics don’t auger well for today’s enthusiast owners. The 2007-on facelifted X358 attempted to answer critics of the car’s ‘golf-club’ styling. Development of the flathead, single-overhead-cam-per-bank V12 was languishing in the midst of punishing new safety requirements that were taking up too much of the tiny Browns Lane development team’s time and attention. The XJ was, in fact, a long-overdue fillip to the Jaguar range when Lyons personally launched it in September 1968. The optimism and certainties of the 1950s and early ’60s were fading. The existing saloons were looking old, sales were tailing off (the MkX/420G was proving a particular disappointment) and it was no longer true to say that Jaguar could sell every car it built. The end for the Series III V12s finally came in 1992, five years after the last of the ‘sixes’. Those were too heavy and too expensive to build compared to new XJ40s, which were nimbler and supposedly better-quality vehicles. Reluctant as many were to point it out at the time, though, these were nothing like as pretty as their predecessors – even if they were traditionally Jaguar in layout and feel. In Series III Double-Six Daimler form it is still the most silky car imaginable to drive. From the outside, the engine makes itself apparent more by the whirring of fans and drivebelts than any true mechanical sound. From within the cocoon-like cabin, cooled by deliciously efficient air-conditioning, the V12 feels more like an electric motor than a reciprocating unit.

Like every Jaguar four-door before it, the 1968 XJ6 was fast and refined beyond its price-tag, yet offered a modern interpretation of saloon-car elegance that would have floored the opposition even if the engineering underneath had not been so accomplished.

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Short- and longwheelbase SIIs were offered alongside each other until the LWB was standardised late in 1974, just before the introduction of the XJ 3.4 poverty model (to replace the 2.8) and Lucas injection on the V12 to curb its monstrous thirst.