CarBrandLogos archive · Jaguar · 1968

JaguarXJ

One saloon replacing an entire model range, and a shape Jaguar could never escape.

Photo: Jaguar MENA · CC BY 2.0

The story

A defining chapter in Jaguar history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Jaguar XJ, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

1970 Jaguar XJ6 4.2 Series 1 - Flickr - The Car Spy

Origins

When the XJ6 appeared in 1968 it did something unusual: it replaced Jaguar's whole saloon line at once — the Mark 2 derivatives, the S-Type, the 420 and the big Mark X — with a single car. Lyons regarded it as his best work, and it was the last car he oversaw personally before retiring.

1970 Jaguar XJ6 4.2 Series 1 - Flickr - The Car Spy · The Car Spy · CC BY 2.0

In The Boardroom - Episode -10 - Reginald Randall

Design and engineering

The point of it was refinement. Jaguar developed the XJ around ride quality and quietness to a degree that embarrassed rivals costing considerably more, using long-travel independent suspension all round and tyres developed specifically for the car. The 4.2 six did most of the work; from 1972 the V12 made the XJ12 briefly the fastest four-door saloon in the world.

In The Boardroom - Episode -10 - Reginald Randall · Jaguar MENA · CC BY 2.0

In production

Then came British Leyland. The Series 2 and Series 3 cars of the 1970s and early 80s were beautiful and could be very badly assembled, and the model's reputation for electrical unreliability dates almost entirely from that period. The Series 3, restyled by Pininfarina, nonetheless soldiered on in V12 form into the early 1990s.

1999 Jaguar XJ-R · Spanish Coches · CC BY 2.0

Legacy

The XJ40 of 1986 was the first clean-sheet replacement, developed on a shoestring and deliberately squared off; the X300 of 1994, under Ford ownership, put the curves back; the X308 brought V8 power. The most interesting engineering came in 2003, when the X350 moved to a riveted and bonded aluminium monocoque — a genuine technical lead over its German rivals — inside a body so conservative that most buyers never registered the car was new.

Chapter 5

Ian Callum finally broke the mould with the X351 of 2009, whose blacked-out rear pillars and upright tail divided opinion in precisely the way the company needed. It sold respectably but never seriously troubled the S-Class or the 7 Series, and when production ended in 2019 Jaguar's flagship saloon line ended with it after fifty-one years.

At a glance