Jaguar World Magazine E-Type – A winning debut Jan 08 Back Issue

At 11am on Monday 26 November, the
first customer XF proper – the so-called
‘Job 1’ – rolled off the assembly line at
Castle Bromwich (see news, page six) to
be handed over to the Jaguar Daimler Heritage
Trust. Its handover marked the beginning of a
ramp up in XF production over the next few
weeks to meet the volumes necessary for when
deliveries begin in March.
Of course, in these days of virtual design when
the broad parameters of a new car’s performance
are determined long before it is built, the physical
importance of ‘Job 1’ being finished is perhaps less
than it used to be. After all, not only did Jaguar’s
engineers know that the car was ‘right’ before it was
built (and many pre-production cars have already
have been completed for final shakedown testing
and for service on press fleets etc), but the XF was
also unveiled to the world at the Frankfurt motor
show back in September.
So, for Job 1 XF there was no last-minute
through the night drive to be completed
while testing components along the way as Bob
Berry famously had to do with the Geneva show
E-type, 9600 HP. But don’t for a minute think that
the removal of that romanticism means the
moment Job 1 XF – chassis number 277 – left the
assembly line was any less significant than the days
when the first XK, ‘Mk 1’, E-type or XJ6 were
completed. In fact, given the current situation Jaguar
finds itself in, the completion of Job 1 XF is more
significant than all the Job 1 models that have gone
before as it marks the beginning of the production
life proper of the car that holds the key to the
marque’s future.