Jaguar run speeds up plans for new model

By Alastair Sloane

The success of Jaguar since the Second World War was celebrated in Belgium the other day with a re-run of a sprint in 1949 that set a speed record for production cars.

Only this time the Jaguar that scorched over the measured kilometre on a motorway near the mediaeval town of Jabbeke was the just-released concept XK180 and not the original XK120 roadster of 50 years ago.

But Jaguar wasn't out to prove anything, just to re-enact an event which, says its executive director Mike Beasley, "has become indelibly etched into the heritage of the Jaguar marque."

British and European owners of XK-engined cars also participated in the special celebration runs down a 2.8km stretch of closed road.

Jaguar took the XK120 from Britain to Belgium in 1949 to prove its claim that the car could do 120 mph (194 km/h), the speed from which its name derived.

"It was one of the few stretches of motorway in Europe available for high-speed testing and was an ideal venue to demonstrate the performance potential of the XK120," said Beasley.

The XK120 was driven by Jaguar's chief test driver Ron "Soapy" Sutton. He clocked 126.448 mph (203.6 km/h) with the standard windscreen and soft-top in place.

Then he ditched the soft-top, replaced the windscreen with a swept-back aero-screen and had another go. The Royal Belgian Automobile Club timed him at 132.596 mph (213.5 km/h).

The two runs silenced Jaguar's many doubters in Europe and America and the XK120's six-cylinder, twin-overhead camshaft engine became the object of much envy.

It was used in C-Type and D-Type sports cars to win Le Mans and became the heart of Jaguar production sedans.

"Returning to Jabbeke was an appropriate and nostalgic climax to the 50th celebrations," said Beasley.

The XK180 roadster was conceived as the spiritual successor to the XK-engined Jaguar roadster of the 1950s.

It was unveiled at the Paris motor show last year where Jaguar was inundated with questions about when it would go into production.

At the time Jaguar said the XK180 was a concept car and unveiled only to celebrate 50 years of the XK series.

But the car has since caught the imagination and talk is that Jaguar might produce a similar roadster based not on the XK180 concept but on the S-Type platform, its mid-range saloon which went on sale in New Zealand a couple of months ago.

The clue to such a car was offered recently by Wolfgang Reitzle, the head of Jaguar-owner Ford's luxury car division.

Reitzle was a senior executive with BMW before he left earlier this year on the same day the board dismissed its chairman Berndt Pischetreider.

Reitzle soon after went to Ford, which put him in charge of Jaguar, Lincoln, Volvo and Aston Martin. He was reported the other day in Germany discussing the possibility of building a Jaguar roadster based on the S-Type.

But Jaguar circled the wagons and parried further questions with the industry's stock answer: "We don't discuss future projects."

Its reticence has led to further speculation, given Ford's preoccupation with styling heritage.

Out of left field, certainly from a British point of view, comes the latest theory, that Jaguar will indeed build a roadster but it will be based on the Ford Thunderbird, which was unveiled at last January's Detroit motor show.

The Thunderbird's platform is a shortened version of the Lincoln LS, which shares its platform with the S-Type Jaguar.

The XK180 is based on a shortened platform of the XK8, which is styled on the famous D-Type. The Thunderbird and S-Type are also styled along traditional lines.

The speculation was again fuelled by reports that Jaguar engineers at Coventry have been zipping around the Midlands in Mercedes-Benz SLKs and Porsche Boxsters.

Yet another is that Jaguar has built a second XK180, this one left-hand-drive and about to be tested in America, Jaguar's biggest market.