Jaguar's Big New Cat

The black-and-white Tudor walls of the Wild Boar Inn were lit up by the Jaguar's headlights as we swung into the cobble-stoned courtyard. We had left the inn on a hill near Beeston in Cheshire a half hour earlier, after we'd cadged a set of keys to the red XJ-S from a Jaguar publicrelations man. We said we wanted to see how its new headlights and its dashboard lighting worked at night. But that was only a ploy, not the real reason at all.

We had turned the keys over to engineer Jim Randall, because we wanted to see how one of the people who developed this new Jaguar would handle it. We like to ride with the men who design cars, because their style at the wheel shows us what they expect of their creations. The more (continued on page 222) Jaguar (continued from page 175) demanding they are, the better the car is likely to be, and they may have personal preferences that account for both the good and the bad things it does. In the case of the XJ-S, we were dealing with levels of goodness; of the bad there was precious little.

Seeing the way Randall drove the Jaguar was very helpful. He caressed the coupe from curve to curve in a manner that was more guiding than driving. He did not anticipate or compensate. Even at very high speeds, he simply turned the wheel the required amount and the big cat tracked around, its low-profile Dun-lops whispering along the intended path. He handled the two-ton car with such delicacy that we wouldn't have been surprised to see him pull on a pair of surgical gloves.

We had been rough on the XJ-S the first day out on a run from the factory at Coventry to Beeston over roads as jagged as a stock-market graph, because we had wanted to force it to its limits to see how it behaved. We'd treated the roomy four-seater XJ-S like a monoposto racing car and gotten away with it. Thick clouds rolling low over the hilly country had left the narrow crowned roads more wet than dry. Around their blind corners the radial Dunlops gripped amazingly well, but when they broke loose--whoosh!--they did it at the back and very suddenly, sending 16 linear feet of Jaguar sliding at an angle across the road. We could always gather it up again with a quick twist of the fast (three-and-a-quarter turns lock to lock) power-boosted steering, but we still remember that high grass-covered bank coming at us through the side window.

We really had to tweak the Jaguar's tail to make it misbehave, and even then we could get it crossed up only on wet roads. On our way back to the Wild Boar that night, we took the open-road turns as fast as we dared and found the handling faultless. In fact, we told Randall that so far we'd found only one thing wrong with the XJ-S: It went so fast so quietly that it was bound to get people into trouble simply because they didn't realize how fast they were going without the usual hiss from the wind and roar from the engine. "We've been accused of that," he said with a wry smile.

That morning over coffee at the Jaguar factory, we'd learned something of what the company's hopes were for the XJ-S. Jaguar is part of British Leyland, whose sales manager saw it as being "outside competition" except for the Mercedes-Benz 450SLC, compared with which, he said, the XJ-S has more standard equipment, more luggage room and better performance. It will also cost a lot less than the Mercedes, representing "traditional Jaguar value for money."

At the end of his spiel, two lovelies from the Jaguar secretarial pool tugged a cover off the XJ-S and we had our first look at the first completely new model to be introduced since the XJ-6 came out in 1968. Any new car from Jaguar is a big event. Jaguars have that heady mix of style, luxury and sporty performance that commands attention, that makes headlines. But we can't say our first glimpse of this one had us yelling "Author! Author!"

The best view of the XJ-S is from the side, which accentuates its lowness and an eager, leaning-forward look. We weren't terribly impressed by its special aluminum wheels; the roof line seemed unimaginative and the grille too weak and insignificant against the heavy black-rubber bumper that's Washington's latest contribution to car styling. And that's about where our nitpicking ended.

After the unveiling, Jaguar's chief engineer explained that the XJ-12 sedan's all-independent front-and rear-suspension assemblies have just about been plugged right into the new body of the XJ-S, a body whose tremendous stiffness accounts for its quietness and unbreakable feel. Though the XJ-S has a short, 102-inch wheelbase, the Jaguar people said it shouldn't be thought of as a successor to the late, lamented XK-E sports car. It was deemed a "sophisticated two-plus-two type of configuration," for which "the feel was that there was a wider market."

That "wider market" doesn't mean we'll be seeing XJ-Ss leaning against every curb in town. Jaguar plans to make only 60 a week to start with; that's fewer cars than any respectable Detroit production line spews out in an hour. That'll add up to around 3000 cars a year, of which three quarters will be shipped to the U. S. and Canada. Its sales here will thus be about the same as those of the Mercedes-Benz 450SLC, of which 1942 were delivered in the U. S. in 1974. It's not big volume, but at a price tag expected to be in the $19,000 area, it could amount to more than $40,000,000 in Jaguar retail sales here. Jaguar is determined not to make the same mistake that it did with the first XJ-6 sedans: pricing them too low.

The XJ-S is offered only with the V12 engine, because the long-stroke six (still a very good engine) won't fit under its low hood. There had been some trouble when the V12 was introduced, back in 1972, from ignition systems that weren't made right and rod bolts that weren't torqued properly, but it's now going quite well. It's a magnificent engine, a 12 for the sake of smoothness and silence, not rasping and roaring, bred in the tradition of the great classics of the Thirties.

More important was the Bosch-Lucas electronic fuel injection now fitted to the all-aluminum 12. From its 5343-c.c. displacement (326 cubic inches, if you haven't gone metric yet) it delivers a net 244 horsepower at 5250 rpm, which makes it one of the most powerful auto engines now available in America. The injection helps it meet emission rules while improving the gas mileage--not the best feature of earlier Jaguar 12s--and making it easier and simpler to start and run.

At only 244 horsepower, this engine is loafing. Just to satisfy their curiosity about its potential, the Jaguar people built some special heads for it with twin cams instead of a single overhead cam and four valves instead of two. It cranked out a thundering 630 horsepower! This would have made quite an engine for a Can-Am racer, but Jaguar is no longer in the racing racket that made its cars so famous in the Fifties.

When we stepped into the XJ-S for the first time, we discovered that it was anything but a stripped racer. Only one thing was missing: any trace of the wood paneling that used to be a hallmark of British cars in general and of Jaguars in particular. Instead, the dash has a look of clean-lined white-on-black efficiency, with a console and minor controls like those in the XJ-12 sedan. New and good-looking is the cowled instrument pod with vertical-reading aircraft-type gauges between the tach and the speedometer and two eye-level strips of warning lights that number 18 in all, so many we were given a color-coded blueprint of the dash so we'd know what was going wrong if one of them started flashing.

We were also handed the marked-up map that showed us the way to the Wild Boar Inn, and when we stowed it away, we found there were pockets in the doors, a bin in the center armrest and a vanity mirror that popped up from the glove-box door. At first the hand brake didn't seem to be on, but the warning light said it was, so we checked and found that the lever, placed between the driver's seat and the door, folds down so it's out of the way when the brake is applied.

On the narrow roads of the tight little isle, we had one problem right away: keeping the tyres clear of the kerbs on the near side (translation: not hitting the curbs on the left with the tires). With its 58-inch track and beefy tires, the XJ-S is a wide car by British standards, and the way the upper fender surfaces are beveled downward means that you can't quite see how wide it really is. After we bounced the big car off about three kerbs, we finally got the range.

When we let the XJ-S free of its tether, it surged forward with an eagerness that was all the more impressive for being dead quiet, its acceleration building and building in that happy way that means that engine size and gear ratios are in perfect harmony. We've never been wild about the Borg-Warner automatic box that Jaguar uses, but once we figured out how this one responded to its T-handled lever, we decided it was more help than hindrance--which is just as well, because it's the only transmission that will be offered on the XJ-S in America in 1976.

On the way back to Coventry after a night at the Wild Boar, we corrected the speedometer on the M6 Motorway and tried some acceleration runs. With two aboard and baggage, the XJ-S reached 40 miles an hour in 4.4 seconds, 50 in 5.8, 60 in 8.3 and 70 in 12.7. That's not bad, but at the factory, we timed an experimental car with a four-speed manual transmission at zero to 60 in 6.8 seconds; we could feel the difference. It had noticeably more punch and a greater feeling of control in the corners. Perhaps this box or an even better one will be a U. S. offering in the future.

The XJ-S is a completely new kind of Jaguar. It wraps up in a single shark-nosed package all the things that make today's Jaguars the best ever built: an outstanding V12 engine, a high level of reliability, interior appointments that look and feel luxurious, styling that's a blend of the classic and the sporty, and a combination of ride and handling that's the envy of car makers who've been around a whole lot longer.

The first-ever Jaguar of 1931 (then called an SSI) was a close-coupled four-seater coupe with a long hood and rakish lines, so the XJ-S is a fully legitimate member of the family, even though it doesn't look like any of its parents. Is it the best Jaguar ever? For $19,000--which rockets a Jag into the supercar stratosphere for the first time--it should be.