The Jaguar Story

Four in the afternoon, a cold day, a soft rain falling out of clouds almost low enough to touch the spires of the church: the cathedral in Coventry, England. It had been burned and blown into rubble on the night of November 14, 1940, by 500 Luftwaffe bombers in the longest raid England took during the war. Work to rebuild began the next day, the architect Sir Basil Spence planning the new cathedral on the site of the old, forming some of the standing ruins into it; the cornerstone was laid by the queen 16 years and a bit later. It's a starkly, strangely beautiful building in stone-and-concrete verticals, angular bronze, incredible spreads of stained glass (one window 80 feet high, 50 wide), carvings and sculptures (Jacob Epstein's last religious work) and the biggest tapestry ever woven. (text continued on page 100)Jaguar Story(continued from page 93) That cold rainy day I was there, the hush of the place was oddly broken by an organ tuner striking again and again a booming chord in E-flat and shouting across the nave to his apprentice; outside, the traffic's remote rumble. Coventry is in the Midlands, and in the Midlands they make machines. That was why the Germans went there in 1940, and that's why people have gone there since: to bring dollars, kroner, francs, lire in exchange for machines and, if they think of it, to look at the cathedral as they go away. But they go for machines. Automobiles, many of them, and best known among these, the Jaguar.

It's close to 50 years now since the Jaguar's beginning--as a motorcycle sidecar built at the rate of one a week by a William Walmsley, who put the thing together, and his sister, who upholstered it. Walmsley's sidecar was a good one, octagonal in form, polished aluminum over ash, and it attracted a partner, William Lyons. They incorporated as Swallow Sidecar, projected the prodigious output of ten units a week and hit the banks for £1000. They prospered, and when they abandoned the sidecar business, they had pushed production to 500 a week.

In the middle Twenties, to reduce the automobile thing to absurd simplicity, there were two kinds: custom-built luxury cars, dazzling in the elegant variety of their bodywork, and the rest. The rest were off-the-peg sedans and touring cars, for the most part--utilitarian, good value for money, some of them, and ugly as sin. Obviously, there was a nascent market among upward-strivers who couldn't afford a Rolls-Royce, nor the two front wheels and the radiator off one, if it came to that, but who deplored the small status conferred by ownership of an Austin Seven. To buy cheap chassis and build attractive bodies on them was a notion that had occurred to others besides Walmsley and Lyons, but not many were to do it as well as they did. They built on the Austin, Fiat, Standard and Swift chassis, and flourished. When the Depression of 1931 hit, they picked up a new segment of trade: people who had to come down an economic notch or two but hated to be obvious about it.

The bodies were attractive--they ran to split windshields, external sun visors, wire wheels and good options in two-tone paint jobs--but the running gear under them was never up to the performance the coachwork seemed to promise. Lyons made a deal with the Standard Motor Company for its 16-horsepower Ensign model, which ran a 2-liter engine of adequate if not stunning performance. Standard agreed to modify the 16 by adding three inches to the wheelbase and stuffing in a higher axle ratio for more top speed--and, of course, less acceleration. The frame was underslung and the engine was set back seven inches. The first body Lyons erected on this chassis was a tight-fitting four-passenger two-door hardtop coupe, blind rear quarters carrying fake landau irons. The hood was tremendously long and this alone, according to the fashion dictates of the time, spelled potency. In fact, the car was deplorably slow getting under way and would do just 70 miles an hour flat-out in fourth gear. But that didn't matter. It looked great and the price was almost incredible: £310, then worth $1400. This was the SS-1, the sensation of the 1931 London auto show and sire of the Wunderwagens that were to follow it--the XK-120, the C-type, the D-type, the XK-E, the XJ-6 and the new 12-cylinder just now on the world market.

The SS-1 and SS-11 passenger cars were backed up by sports models--SS-90, SS-100--because Lyons, whose grasp of the fundamentals has never been less than brilliant, knew that competition effort was vital to sales, particularly in Europe and particularly then. A good SS-100 would do 100 mph and the model had notable successes in rallies, hill climbs and sports-car races. An SS-100 won the International Alpine Trial of 1936 (and again in 1948) and the 1937 Royal Automobile Club Rally. The car would not only run, it had visual appeal to burn--a happy amalgam of the design points that were the desiderata of the day: big flat-lens headlights, flaring fenders, louvers all over the hood, curved dashboard carrying saucer-sized main instruments, a saddle gas tank hung astern. Only a few SS-100s were made and the survivors are classics.

In the middle Thirties, Lyons decided (Walmsley had retired) that the cars needed something more than SS for identification. (Incidentally, no one now remembers what SS stood for: Swallow Sidecar or Standard Swallow or Swallow Special.) Animal and bird names were in vogue at the time, and he chose Jaguar for that reason and because it had been the name of a good aircraft engine. The cars were SS Jaguars from then until after the war, when Nazi Germany had given the initials (Schutzstaffel) an unhappy connotation. The car has been Jaguar since. To give the first SS Jaguar the performance its appearance called for, Lyons had asked the designer Harry Weslake to modify Standard's side-valve engine into an overhead-camshaft unit and had brought in W. M. Heynes to oversee engineering, the beginning of an enduring association with the company for both men. Heynes was a vice-chairman when he retired, full of honors, in 1969. Like the SS-1 that had gone before it, the new SS Jaguar sedan looked more expensive than it was: A poll of dealers at its introduction showed an average price guess of £632, but the sticker was only £385 ($1885). The model was another smash success (it was called the poor man's Bentley, sometimes admiringly, sometimes not), and when everything stopped in September 1939, the firm was turning out 250 cars a week.

When war work was over (repairing bombers, building the fuselage for the Meteor, Britain's first jet, making army sidecars, 10,000 trailers and so on), Lyons got back into automobile production quicker than most, being under way in July 1945. The factory had been bombed, of course, but not wiped out. First cars off the line were prewar models and it was 1948 before a new one came along: the Mark V, sedan or convertible, 2.5- or 3.5-liter engine. It was the first Jaguar to have independent front suspension and hydraulic brakes; it was the first Jaguar most Americans saw, and they liked it. It was no ball of fire in performance and it had irritating detail flaws (for one, a heater that couldn't cope with a brisk autumn day in Connecticut, never mind a Minnesota winter). Still, the imported-car mystique was new and wonderful then and, like all the Jaguars that had gone before it and most of those that were to follow, it lifted the psyche, roused the spirits and made Buick owners feel somehow slobby. But the Mark V was really an interim device. Long-laid plans were about to spring into reality.

The XK-120 Jaguar was first seen in the London auto show of 1948. Competing makers looked and knew despair. They wished they had left their things on the transporters. In John Blunsden's history of Jaguar: "Overnight it rendered obsolete all previous conceptions of what constituted a mass-produced sports car ... by combining refinement and comfort with outstanding good looks and a brilliant performance, all at the staggeringly low price of £998 [$4000] ... it couldn't fail to become one of the great sports-car successes of all time."

A new car, a really new car, is a rare thing. Sheet metal curved up instead of down or in instead of out has masked many an old bucket, and new technical features are usually only so called: The historians will tell you, and prove it, that the Himmelstadt had a three-way bronze-bushed gitzel valve in 1908. The XK-120 was a new machine not just in single variants on ancient themes but in total being: It was a high-performance automobile, good-looking and comfortable, purchasable for less than half the $10,000 that equivalent performance alone was supposed to cost. And it was remarkable, in a way, that it had surfaced in England, home of generations of drivers who were prepared to pay for speed and handling in agonies of cart springing, wind in the face, wet feet (continued on page 154)Jaguar Story(continued from page 100) and mind-splitting unreliabilities--and swear, even as they bled, that they loved it all and would be content with nothing else. The British ultraenthusiast turned a stone face to everything that made motoring easier and thus more accessible to the masses, from synchromesh gears and the centrifugal spark advance to the abominable automatic transmission. The XK-120, if it didn't go all the way in the other direction, at least pointed out the path.

On the other hand, perhaps what William Lyons had done wasn't all that new. Certainly he was following the precept of the original earthshakers, Ford and Austin: Make it cheap and sell it by the boatload. Jaguar has never exported less than 50 percent of its output, in some years has run as high as 80 percent, and does business in 100-odd countries. Lyons' worst enemies would not deny that the figures reflect his determination to avoid the parochial like typhoid, to build for world taste. Not all U. K. manufacturers have shared his insight.

Heart of the marvel that was the XK-120 was the six-cylinder, 3.4-liter double-overhead-camshaft engine, rated at 160 horsepower. Susceptible to apparently endless modification and improvement, it was to prove out as one of the longest-lived of automobile power plants. Its longevity was the root secret of the Jaguar price policy: The initial tooling costs on the XK engine were paid for so long ago that only the accountants remember, and they're not sure. The engine had been in work since just after the war, the creature of Heynes and Walter Hassan, long a legendary figure in highspeed design. First double-overhead-camshaft hemihead engine to be made on a production-line basis, it showed more horsepower per liter than any other such, and its estimated top speed in the two-seater chassis--120 mph--was conservative: Run through a flying mile in Belgium, it did 132.6.

Competition drivers couldn't wait to lay hands on XK-120s. In August 1949, Leslie Johnson's roadster won the Silverstone production-car race; in 1950, Ian Appleyard won the Alpine Rally, Peter Walker took the Shelsley Walsh hill climb, Stirling Moss won the Tourist Trophy and Phil Hill won at Pebble Beach, the first big U. S. victory for the XK.

These were private-owner efforts. The factory's own program, headed by the legendary F. R. W. "Lofty" England, was pointed to the 24-hour race at Le Mans. Le Mans, though it was a French race, was important to British car lovers; it was famed in song and story as the site of the glorious Bentley triumphs in the Twenties and Thirties: They won it five times. It was plain that stock XK-120s would be overmatched at Le Mans in 1951 against the quick Ferraris and the big Chrysler-engined Cunninghams. A pro forma two-seater body was put on a light tubular chassis, the engine an XK-120 boosted to 210 hp. This was the C-type Jaguar. Three were entered. An identical oil-pipe failure put two out, but the third, Peter Whitehead and Peter Walker up, won at a new record rate, 93.49 mph for the day and night of running. The C-type won again in 1953, first and second place; the leading car was first ever to average over 100 mph at Le Mans. Ferrari won in 1954 by two and a half minutes over a new competition Jaguar, the D-type. The XK engine was now putting out 250 hp, and the D-type, which won at Le Mans the next year, had 285. Privately entered D-types won in 1956 and 1957 to give the Jaguar an equal standing with the Bentley as a five-time Le Mans victor. The big year was 1957: first, second, third, fourth and sixth, a wipe-out.

The all-conquering D-type was a stark sports-race car, thoroughly unsuitable for everyday use; but so many people wanted one that the factory put into work a roadable version, the body equipped with reasonable amenities and the bumpers, lights and so on that would see it through licensing inspection. Even with the engine tamed by 35 hp in the interest of tractability, the XK-SS would reach 100 mph in 14 seconds and touch 144 at the top end. It was an export-only item and 16 had been built, 12 for the U. S. market, when a fire destroyed nearly one third of the Jaguar factory. Disastrous block-square fires were an old story to people who had lived through the blitz; they began to rebuild as soon as the rubble cooled. The factory was back to normal in six weeks, but the XK-SS was a permanent casualty.

In 1956, the year William Lyons was deservedly knighted, Jaguar abandoned racing. The bill had been around $3,000,000 and worth it. The publicity return had been prodigious; it had sold not only thousands of XK-120s, 140s and 150s but thousands of sedans, too. The Mark VII of 1950 had been called as much a breakthrough as the XK-120: a big sedan, sized for the U. S. market, the XK-120 engine giving it a true 100 mph and readability to cope with it. It was a luxurious car, loaded with the leather and the genuine tree-wood without which no quality British car has a chance, even today, on the home market. It could be used as a limousine, but still it turned out to be a useful rally car, winning the brutal Monte Carlo in 1956, and it could be raced. Stirling Moss ran one in a production-car race at Silverstone the year after it came out, and while a contemporary photograph shows it heeled hard over, indeed, in a corner, precariously hanging in there, still it did win.

Not the best loved of all Jaguars, the Mark VII plagued many owners with small annoyances: electrical problems, persistent starting difficulties and other such nuisances. In the late Forties and early Fifties, British car makers heavily dominated the U. S. market; but the Volkswagen blitz, emphasizing rigidly schooled mechanics and warehouses full of parts, changed all that, and some cars that had sold well--the Austin A40 comes to mind--practically disappeared. Jaguar had an advantage in its first U. S. dealer, M. E. Hoffman, who is a supersalesman in the classic mode. (A customer said. "If you told Hoffman New York was going to be atom-bombed in five minutes, he'd say, 'It's not important. I'm going to show you the greatest automobile in the world. You will see. Come.' ") He moved a lot of Jaguars.

The Jaguar sedans went through various permutations up to the Mark X, with 2.4-, 3.4-, 3.8- and 4.2-liter engines. In 1968, a redesigned sedan, the XJ6, was announced--prematurely, as it turned out. Production difficulties, obvious bad planning and wildcat strikes so delayed the car that it is only now coming into the showrooms in reasonable quantities. For a long time, it commanded a black-market price as high as £1000 ($2400) over list. One enterprising character was discovered to have got his name on the top of the waiting list in 16 dealerships. I drove one around England for a week in May 1968. I admit, more or less cheerfully, that I loathed every Mark VII I ever sat in; but the XJ6 is something else again, quiet, fast (120 mph) and sure-footed on the road to a degree still uncommon in comparable American cars. It has a heater that heats and an automatic transmission that does automate, if without the turbinelike, notchless smoothness that is taken for granted in the best Detroiters. (The heater and the automatic transmission, for reasons that baffle me, at least, seem to have been the two things European makers have found hardest to master.) The XJ6 spreads out a splendid impression of luxury, not more nor less than, say, a Cadillac, but of a different sort. It's classic luxury, a virtuoso treatment of the solid-leather, polished-walnut, big-round-instrument theme. You can't get an XJ6 upholstered in a sculptured fabric shot through with silver threads, and perhaps that's just as well; it would probably make the car look, as the British say, tarted up.

The XJ6, stickered at $7000-plus, runs, in the export version, the same 4.2-liter engine that gave the famous E-type its blistering performance. Slinky, slippery-looking as a shark, the "Lyons line" all over it, the E-type two-seater was Jaguar's 1961 gift offering (at around $5600) to its devoted clientele. Few better-looking cars were ever built. The E-type was, one might say, irritatingly faithful to what was now becoming the tradition: It looked great, went like the hammers of hell--100 mph in 22 seconds, with lots left--and it handled impeccably, stopped imperatively on 11-inch disk brakes in front and 10-inch in the rear.

But the ghost of the long-suffering British Enthusiast still rode beside the driver: no synchromesh on first gear, windows-up ventilation? forget it, outside door handles sized for ten-year-olds fingered small for their age. heavy clutch, convertible tops that leaked, dimmer switch on the dashboard, an interior that might have been designed by the mechanics who made it. But, going, it was some sensational $6500 worth (after all, you could challenge $18,000 Ferrari things; you might not win, but you wouldn't look like a clown); and until so many were sent to this country (95 percent of production in some years) that an E-Jag became almost an ordinary possession, it was a big draw at curbside.

For years the elves of Coventry hinted that the wizard Heynes had on his drawing board a new engine to replace the ancient device that had pushed the XK-120 to glory. The old one had been bored, fiddled and breathed upon to churn out 125 more horsepower than it was born with, but there had to be an end to it somewhere. Heynes told me three years ago, under binding oath, that there was, indeed, such an engine and that it was a V12. There is a certain amount of magic in that number (obviously, since most models of the Ferrari have been V12s). The V16 Cadillac and Marmon engines of 40 years ago were delightfully smooth. A V12 engine, for reasons mechanical and unenchanting, is inherently in balance. It can idle quietly, accelerate briskly, run at top speed without unseemly hubbub. A V12, 314-hp engine is in the car that will replace the E-type as the E-type replaced the XKs. This engine produces the sensation, and the forward motion to go with it, of an E-type engine set up for racing, and with about as much tumult as a Waring blender. It will jump 0--60 in 6.8 seconds and it will run 140 mph (the theoretical top is nearly 150) with dignity. That last is important. There isn't much point in going fast if it's all an adventure. That's for stock-car race drivers, who know what Parnelli Jones meant when he said, "If the thing's in control, you're not going fast enough."

A plan, later aborted, to go to Le Mans again in the Sixties was the root of the V12. It was a team project: Heynes, chief engineer C. W. L. Bailey, Walter Hassan and chief designer Harry Mundy. The race engine was rated at over 500 hp, so it's obvious that the production V12, like the old XK-120, will accept any amount of future modification. Incidentally, the 4.2 Series 2 E-type engine continues in production, although the car itself does not, and it can be had as an option in the Series 3.

There are lots of important little things in the V12 Jag, like fully transistorized ignition (no points to get out of whack). Detail improvements in the new model take pages to list. In front, it has a wider front track than the old E-type, anti-dive suspension, ventilated disks. It runs on six-inch rims, Dunlop radial tires on the pressed-steel wheels. Wire spokes can be had.

So, Sir William has done it again. A car that doesn't look like anyone else's, things on it that can be called new! new! new! and released with perfect timing--when the market for the old one had been worked out. He's won the half-price war again, hands down: For the price of a car of comparable usable performance and status rating, you can have two V12 Jags (they go for about $7300 each) and maybe a dune buggy and a good bike thrown in. For consistency's sake, there are a few grubby things: occasional body noise, road rumble, easy bottoming at the rear. The heating system is a lot better, but the switches are still Mickey Mouse and obscure, you still go to the dashboard to dim the lights and you still jam your fingers in the outside door handles. On the first cars to come into this country, at least, the original right-drive layout was obvious in such things as switch placement. The selector lever for the Borg-Warner automatic (better than before, but it still chirps and tells you everything it's doing) has the detents on the left side of the slot, where a driver sitting on the right, as in England, will naturally push the lever to the left and engage the notches. But since there are no detents on the other side of the slot, it's dead easy for a left-side driver to stuff the stick from second straight into reverse, an event that, at 60 mph, would produce calamity, if not something serious. But the underbonnet view would move a heart of stone, and the engine response, the sheer spinning surge of it, is marvelously exciting, and terrorfree, too, because for all its capability, the thing is as sturdy as a set of bar bells.

Each V12 Jaguar is eight weeks in the making. I don't know if that's a tribute to old-world craftsmanship (I devoutly doubt it) or the brutal intransigence of British union leaders or other, weightier factors beyond my ken. Still, the last of eight coats of paint is not laid on until the car has been road tested. That, no argument, suggests a strictly first-cabin attitude going in. Or, rather, coming out.