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Originally Posted by garcon
Sideways, I thought you were harking back to older days, and you are quite right of course. A great, enthusiast's response if I may say so.
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Thanks, garcon: much appreciated.
My late father ran SS Jag saloons prewar (1930s). Somewhere I even have a photo of one with a gasbag on the top!
He than ran a MK V saloon in the late 40s and early 50s and then switched over to a MKVII saloon. It was the first car in which I went at 100 mph: over Bodmin Moor in the middle of the night. I can still remember the huge glowing Jaeger le Coultre instruments glowing weirdly from their blue lighting!
The MK VII and IX were really coachbuilt luxury cars, with hand finished burr walnut veneer cappings and dash, sumptuous Connolly leather and deep Wilton carpets. Wonderfully quiet and effortless and very heavy: girder chassis still, in those days. Remembering Moss and Maston Gregory et al used to circuit race them, squealing round corners with their tyres aflame.................
I went with Dad one day to Henleys, in North London, where he was leaving his car for a service (probably 1952). The foreman allowed us to oogle a black XK120 roadster, which an American movie star had brought over for his filming contract. (In those days -early 50s - 99% of Jaguar sports car production went to the US, so XKs were rare as hen's teeth!).
I fell instantly in love.
I do hope you are right about Jags retaining their individual style. That said, unless a Bill Lyons, Wally Hassan and Bill Heynes are behind the breed, I fear that like so many, it will become simply a prestige brand, with no single visionary steering the design and engineering.