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As I write this almost a month has passed since the XK60 weekend, and the intervening four weeks must have been very busy for Osteopaths across the country – such was the degree of neck straining undertaken by all those that visited Goodwood and Cowdray Park in an effort not to miss anything that was going on. As well as the classic XKs themselves the other star of the celebrations was the XK engine, numerous highly-polished examples of which were also responsible for neck injury as whenever a bonnet was raised there was never a shortage of eager onlookers keen to take a closer look. In fact, on each of my regular trips between the XK village and Goodwood’s inner paddock I passed an E-type that was parked for the duration of the two days outside the Super Shell building with its bonnet raised. Not once did I wander by without seeing at least one or two visitors admiring its 4.2-litre engine. Of course, from the outset the XK engine’s visual appeal was every bit as intentional as its mechanical superiority – a fact underlined by William Heynes, Jaguar’s chief engineer who oversaw its design, in a paper he wrote for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (see, Red Raider, page 35). In short, the XK engine not only had to be powerful, it had to look it too. The aim was that customers would have just as much pride in the engine that powered their Jaguar as they would in the way the car looked. It was an approach that worked, and how…so successful was the XK engine that it remained in production until 1993. While today’s ever tightening emissions laws mean it’s impossible to see how the basic design of a new engine could ever have such longevity again, it’s also sad to note that Jaguar’s current engines are not much to look at either.