From the January 1976 issue of Car and Driver.

The first thing you should know about the XJ-S is that everybody can’t have one. Which, if human nature continues its course, means that it automatically moves to a position near the top of everybody's desirability list.

The main reason why everybody can’t have an XJ-S is that Jaguar plans to ship only about 2000 a year (75 percent of total production) to the U.S. So being on a first-name—maybe even golf-play­ing—basis with your dealer will give you a certain priority. Maybe.

Another reason why everybody can’t have an XJ-S is that they cost an enor­mous amount of money: 19,000 U.S. dollars is the number on the window sticker. Even with a liberal trade-in allow­ance for your old Impala and 48-month paper from First National City, that’s still a bit rich. Anyone less than an executive vice-president or maybe a land baron need not apply.

Perhaps that is as it should be. Be­cause the XJ-S is very much a rich man’s car. Those who have to worry about where their next tank of gas is coming from won’t appreciate the V-12’s silken surge of power. All they’ll see is that the fuel consumption readily drops below 10 mpg if they indulge them­selves. The practical man and the ma­chinery lover, both of whom have visions of doing their own work, will be horrified by the engine compartment. The engine itself is a marvelous device: 326 cubic inches, aluminum block and heads, a single overhead camshaft for each bank enclosed in an exquisite ribbed cover. Except that you can’t see any of it. The whole thing is hidden beneath a bewil­dering tangle of hoses, wires, tubes, ca­bles, pipes, valves, relays, filters, switches, and miscellaneous black box­es. It’s enough to make even the most determined home tuner snap his toolbox back shut.

But the rich man won’t be put off. In fact, this sort of incomprehensible ma­chinery makes the car that much more exclusive. Certainly it’s not a source of concern. Does he bother himself with how much trouble it is to dry clean a suit? Of course not. He just waves his hand and it’s done for him. Same with the Jaguar. Just send it down to the dealer and let one of the mechanics take care of it.

There is such a shortage of rich man’s cars these days. How do you show the world that you’ve got money to burn? You sure as hell don’t do it by buying a Seville: a paltry $13,000 on the window sticker, ironclad warranty, gilt-edge re­sale value. Nothing chancy about that. It runs like a piece from Tiffany’s while you own it and there is always some guy waiting around a used-car lot to take it off your hands for a good price when you grow bored. No extravagance there.

Now we have the XJ-S, a truly expen­sive car by every measure. It’s priced beyond any American-built car, and for the first few years, you could have a new Chevrolet for the cost of its annual de­preciation. And if the mechanical and in­cidental failures we experienced on our test car are any indication, it will require frequent maintenance. So you have to be rich. There is no getting around that. But the beauty of this Jaguar is that it gives you something you can’t get else­where. It goes to excess.

Even five years ago, when fuel was plentiful and there were few speed limits on the Continent, the XJ-S would have been considered the worldly gentle­man’s ultimate automobile. Take the well-to-do Londoner of the time; a part­ner in his firm, a title in the offing, a hunt­ing preserve in Scotland, a villa in the South of France. This Jaguar would have been perfect. Up the Motorway at 140 mph in complete serenity. No labor­ing. Nary a murmur. Normal cars strain more at 70 mph. Brush aside slow-mov­ing traffic with a flick of the lights. Con­verse politely with the passengers. Anticipate the weekend while the Jaguar does the work. Off the four-lane and onto the ancient secondary roads, the powerful disc brakes burn off speed as the corners approach. The supple inde­pendent suspension lopes gracefully over the heaving asphalt. The V-12 lev­els the grades. And it happens so easily, so completely without strain, that you forget all cars do not perform in this way.

The truth is that cars do not perform this way today because they are not al­lowed to. The speed limit is 55 every­where in the U.S. Some parts of Europe allow more, but nowhere is 140 mph per­mitted. So the manufacturers make their cars for the speed limits. Most people don’t know the difference anyway.

Therein lies the extravagance of the XJ-S. The car has one outstanding quali­ty—poise at extraordinary speeds—and you can’t use it. You must understand how special this car really is. Not only will it accelerate to 140 mph on short no­tice, but once you reach that speed, you can lean over to retune the radio. And then continue your conversation with the passengers. One hundred and forty miles per hour in this car is no big deal. The scenery just rushes past a little fast­er. Never mind that you don’t need the speed and can’t use it. What could be more extravagant?

All of this does have some useful rub­-off at legal speeds. A car that is silent and surefooted at 140 has to be even better at 55. The engine is quiet—uncan­nily so. You hear other sounds instead; the expansion of Freon in the air condi­tioner, a whine from the transmission, even the speedometer cable. It seems uncarlike. Exotic. But when you toe into the accelerator, the engine takes over with authority. Air moans as it enters the twin cleaner boxes. The car deliberately gathers itself up before it moves for­ward. It’s very quick—90.3 mph in the quarter-mile—but it denies you the thrill of speed. It never seems to go fast, even when the speedometer needle is pointing out three-digit numbers. It’s too com­posed to seem fast.

The suspension is amazing. It is taut but not hard, and the geometry is accu­rate. The car seems immune to the laws of physics. It makes you think you could never lose it—that it would compensate automatically for your blunders. If you look hard, you’ll find certain areas where the handling misses perfection. If you are hurrying through a fast bend at full power then suddenly lift off the gas, you are aware of the car settling into a new attitude. It needs a steering correction to maintain its path. Not much, but enough so that you know it must have a driver. And you can bottom out the suspension; we did it only once, in a curve at the bot­tom of a steep hill.

Other than that, the Jaguar is leagues ahead of any other four-passenger road car. Pitching blacktop roads that would send a Porsche into fits of darting and bring a Thunderbird to its knees against the jounce bumpers cause the Jaguar no discomfort. In turns, it understeers predictably. The steering is accurate and the power assist requires a progressively greater effort on the part of the driver as he turns the wheel farther from center. This is as it should be. The car has no tricks. It is merely your obedient servant, with capabilities that should be talked about rather than used.

The XJ-S is a new type of car for Jag­uar. Even though it replaces the XKE in the lineup, it’s an altogether different sort of car. Most of the design work was done in the late 1960s, when it appeared that federal standards for occupant pro­tection would prohibit convertibles. So only one body style was planned—a 2+2-passenger coupe. In the interven­ing years, the design was made quieter and even more luxurious when it be­came clear that Mercedes-Benz had a lucrative market all to itself with the 450SLC. In the end, the Mercedes and Jaguar models are very similar. Both have about the same size, weight and passenger capacity. But the XJ-S is less expensive and has better performance.

In one sense, the XJ-S is the last in a line of traditional Jaguars. Its concept and its style are the product of two men, Malcolm Sayer and Sir William Lyons, whose earlier efforts produced the C- ­and D-Type racing Jaguars and the glori­ous E-Type road car. Sayer, a brilliant engineer and aerodynamicist, died in 1970 after the style of the XJ-S was fi­nalized. Sir William Lyons, the founder of Jaguar, is now retired.

Jaguar cars have always been known for their streamlining, not of the shovel­-nose/chopped-tail school but rather for their intuitive, flowing shapes, which are so pleasing to the eye. The XJ-S contin­ues this adherence to aerodynamic prin­ciple, and if the lines are not so pleasing as those of the D-Type, it may be be­cause wind-tunnel data now take prece­dence over what simply looks right. But like all of those Jaguars of old, the XJ-S is a smooth car. No harsh vertical lines to upset air flow; no scoops and slots to channel it where it doesn’t want to go. Only a small grille opening in front to let in the right amount of cooling air.

Those who criticize the XJ-S’s styling usually do so on the grounds that such smooth shapes are old-fashioned. Con­temporary design centers about rectan­gular themes and produces broad-shoul­dered images such as those of current Mercedes cars. That is certainly not this Jaguar. Yet its broad beam, huge tail­lights and prominent wheels give it a cer­tain strong character that it shares with no other car on the road. This is a car that will grow on you.

Mechanically, this new coupe is based on the XJ sedan. It uses the same floor pan, shortened about seven inches to reduce the wheelbase, and the same suspension with different shock absor­ber, spring and anti-sway bar rates. Fully dressed, the XJ-S is about four inches shorter and four inches narrower than a Camaro and weighs just over 4000 pounds. Power-assisted rack-and-pinion steering, air conditioning, and a limited-­slip differential are standard equipment. Exhaust gas recirculation, air injection and two catalytic converters are used to control emissions.

Those who are attracted to the XJ se­dan for its opulent interior will be some­what disappointed by the XJ-S. For one thing, there is no wood. Really, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Sporting Jag­uars do not have wood dashboards. Only the sedans. But it is so well done in the sedan, such a perfect complement to the Connolly hides on the seats, that we’ve come to think of it as a trademark of Jaguar cars and are therefore disap­pointed to find all-black, vinyl-covered padding on the panel of the XJ-S. The vacuum-formed plastic instrument clus­ter, a piece that is pure Pinto in design and execution, only heightens the loss. The seat facings do remain leather (the sides are vinyl), however, and a high­-quality carpet is used on the floor and in the trunk.

Remembering the contortions neces­sary to enter the old E-Types and the tight confines once you were inside, one does not think of sporting Jaguars as accommodating carriages. The driver must conform to the car; never the other way around. The XJ-S is more sedan than sports car, and the comfort of its interior is in direct proportion to the components of that blend. Yet there are traces of the unyielding Jaguar sports car. For exam­ple, the tunnel has a bump on the side that tries to force the driver’s leg away from the accelerator. And there is no dead pedal or foot rest of any sort for the driver’s left leg; to make this even worse, the carpet in that area is covered with a slippery vinyl anti-wear pad, so you can’t even dig in a heel.

Finally, there is the matter of the driv­ing position. Perhaps the telescoping steering column confuses the issue, be­cause the first impulse is to leave the seat alone and pull the wheel back until it’s an easy reach. Then, with nothing to brace your left leg against, you find your­self sliding down out of the seat. Putting the steering wheel clear forward and running the seat ahead until your left leg touches the firewall is a much better so­lution. Only the proximity of your head to the windshield pillar seems wrong then, but you get used to that after a few hun­dred miles.

Certainly there would be no difficulty in getting used to the rear seat if you are short enough to live with the low ceiling. Kneeroom is reasonable for a coupe, and there is elbow room to spare. Only the ceiling is low. But unlike other manu­facturers who tend to assume that the rear in a 2+2 is primarily decorative, Jaguar has gone to the trouble of provid­ing a very comfortable seat. The pad­ding is soft yet deep, the cushions offer good support and there are even little storage bins on each side.

Even so, all of this discussion of com­fort, upholstery materials, and fender lines seems wide of the mark. The XJ-S is remarkable for one quality; its extrava­gant and completely unusable perform­ance. You’re always reminded of it—the way it springs forward when you press the accelerator, its catlike grace on the boulevard, its stability and balance when the speedometer climbs. It’s a car made for epic journeys. Since those opportuni­ties are rare, it attempts to appease its driver with power accessories and auto­matic temperature control. And it does a fair job. Later in the year, a four-speed manual transmission will be available­—an unprecedented novelty in a car of this stature—and it will give serious drivers a stronger vote in the proceedings. But it won’t change the car much.

The XJ-S is a dark and mysterious product of England’s tortured auto in­dustry, fantastically overqualified for to­day’s driving conditions—a rich man’s car for an opulent age that might have been but now clearly never will be. That is reason enough to want one.

Specifications

Specifications

1976 Jaguar XJ-S
Vehicle Type: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 2+2-passenger, 2-door coupe

PRICE
Base/As Tested: $19,200/$19,200

ENGINE
SOHC V-12, aluminum block and heads
Displacement: 326 in3, 5343 cm3
Power (SAE net): 244 hp @ 5250 rpm
Torque (SAE net): 269 lb-ft @ 4500 rpm

TRANSMISSION
3-speed automatic

CHASSIS
Suspension, F/R: control arms/multilink
Brakes, F/R: 11.2-in vented disc/10.4-in disc
Tires: Dunlop SP Sport Super
205/70VR-15

DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 102.0 in
Length: 191.7 in
Width: 70.6 in
Height: 49.6 in
Curb Weight: 4020 lb

C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 7.5 sec
1/4-Mile: 16.0 sec @ 90 mph
100 mph: 21.5 sec
Top Speed (observed): 140 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 179 ft
Roadholding: 0.91 g

C/D FUEL ECONOMY
Observed, city/highway: 12/12 mpg

C/D TESTING EXPLAINED