Jaguar World Magazine The Best of Jaguar Sports Cars Special Issue

Jaguar has been synonymous with the sports car for since the SS90 in 1935. Even though the company has built a lot of its reputation on the ‘grace, space and pace’ of its saloons, it’s the iconic sporting models such as the E-type that have cemented the brand as a global premium car maker.
Coinciding with the launch of the hugely significant F-TYPE, this book aims to celebrate all that is best about Jaguar sports cars – from the XK 120 that premiered at the British Motor Show in 1948 through to the present day. The XK 120 was the car that invented the Jaguar brand as we know it today. It was originally intended purely as a showcase for an all-new six-cylinder engine; but such was the reaction to the curvaceous styling that Jaguar was compelled to put it into production. Thirteen years on from that, Jaguar pulled another motor show shock by unveiling the E-type – a truly stunning sports car that offered Ferrari pace at a fraction of the cost. It’s now a classic car that not only defines Jaguar, it also represents a most romantic era of motoring, when the promise of the open road was at its most alluring. We must also not forget the halo effect Jaguar enjoyed thanks to its successful Le Mans campaigns in the 1950s with the C- and D-type. Jaguar, in line with much of the British car industry, experienced its challenges in the 1970s and 1980s, but that didn’t stop the XJS from becoming a hugely successful model. Its successor, the XK8, which was introduced in 1996, emulated that success but in a much shorter timeframe and it remains to this day a high desirable modern day classic. The XJS and XK8 are very much sporting grand tourers, so the XK replacement introduced in 2006 and now the F-TYPE have sought to increase the sporting character more in tune with the E-type from 1961 and contemporary rivals from the likes of Porsche and Aston Martin. Whatever your favourite Jaguar sports car, you’ll find much to celebrate in this book.